Boycott or neglect?
On Thursday, Parliament permitted the government to withdraw an additional Rs45,000 crore from the public exchequer with no debate or scrutiny. The Rajya Sabha passed all appropriation bills presented before it without any debate, even as the opposition MPs continued making an infernal din, demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into 2G spectrum scam.
The Lok Sabha had passed the appropriation bills relating to supplementary demands for grants with a gross amount of Rs 44,945.52 crore the previous day, under practically identical circumstances. Opposition MPs are boycotting proceedings and trying to disrupt the functioning of parliament by standing in the well of the house and shouting slogans.
To what avail?
As a result of the opposition’s so-called ‘determination’ that they will not allow Parliament to function unless the government agrees to a JPC, both Houses have given sanction for a large sum of extra expenditure for 2010-11, with neither any debate nor any scrutiny of the proposals. Are these MPs doing the job they have been elected to do? Or are they not only wasting money by disrupting the functioning of Parliament – which costs an estimated Rs7.8 crore per day – but neglecting their duties to their voters by not questioning the government on how it proposes to spend the taxpayers’ money?
The logjam over the Opposition demand for a JPC probe into the spectrum scam has continued to disrupt Parliament for the 16th working day now. But the government, fed up of the Opposition’s inflexible positions, it appears, decided to push the money bills through, regardless of shouting. And it did so. Minister of State for Finance Namo Narain Meena moved the bills, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh watched. They were declared passed by voice vote. No Opposition MP, it appears, even asked for a division, which could have proved dicey in the upper house, where the government has a wafer-thin majority.
What use, then, was all the shouting by the BJP, AIADMK, TDP and the Left parties? It’s almost as if they colluded in passing the bills without debate!
In 2005, addressing the BJP’s parliamentary party meeting on the first business day of the monsoon session, then BJP President and Leader of the Opposition L K Advani had conceded that the NDA’s boycott of the Budget session of Parliament that year had created a “wrong perception” in the public. Former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who had reservations about the boycott then, had said that the party’s MPs should sit inside and aggressively raise issues. It seems the BJP is extremely slow to learn from the lessons of its own history.
Risky racing
All too often, we see young men on powerful motorcycles engaging in high-speed races on the roads in Goa. Many of them are teenagers. Some are even underage, and ought not to be riding motorcycles in the first place.
Needless to say, these races tragically claim the lives of some of these youngsters and cause serious injuries to others, especially pillion riders. But such behaviour on roads that have other traffic and pedestrians can cause serious problems to others, who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Police need to crack down sharply on these road racers, by levying stiff fines for a first offence and confiscating their motorcycles and suspending their driving licenses for a fixed period for subsequent offences.
The parents of those found driving motorcycles while underage need to be severely penalised. Parents who knowingly allow their wards to break the law should pay a stiff price, for they are not only endangering their own children’s lives, but those of innocent bystanders as well.
