A sad day for Indian Democracy

The Lokpal is again back into the cold storage, thanks to well managed Rajya Sabha show which intentionally sabotaged the Lokpal bill. Our so called champions of democracy completely failed in the fight against corruption. Now the entire nation is asking the question, who planned and plotted this midnight Lokpal fiasco? How the Rajya Sabha session was fixed? Cricket match can be fixed, football match can be fixed. Can a parliament which represents 120 crore people, also be fixed? Is this murder of democracy?

It was last day of winter session. The Lokpal debate began with an excellent speech by Arun Jaitley, the leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha. I don’t want get into details so let’s directly jump to the climax. At 10:45 PM, Lalu Prasad Yadav entered into the visitor’s gallery. Meanwhile, Rajniti Prasad got his chance to speak. A news broke out in national TV channels that everything was planned, a bitter exchange of words could lead to chaos in the house and this would take the bill to midnight and the session would come to an end. After few minutes, a news channel reported possibility of orchestrated chaos in the house.

At 11 PM, Mr. Narayanswamy started his speech. He was continuously attacking the opposition on the issue of minority reservation. At the same time Rajniti Prasad suddenly came to the front and snatched lokpal bill document from the hands of Narayanswami. The aim behind this act was to invoke a chaos in the house. But this plan didn’t work as BJP and the opposition remained calm and impassive. The opposition demanded immediate vote. Around 11:30 the house was adjourned for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, Mr. Pavan Kumar Bansal, Parliamentary affairs minister, rose and asked for more time to study and review 187 amendments pushed by the opposition. Arun Jaitley and Sitaram Yechury said that they were ready to sit the whole night to pass this bill. But the minister said that technically it is not possible to run the house after 12 PM. Finally at 11:57, Hamid Ansari, the chairman of Rajya Sabha adjourned the house sine die. So this was the sequence of events which clearly suggest that everything was fixed.

In my opinion, the Congress party was waiting for 12 O’ clock so as to avoid voting on the Lokpal bill. The Congress did not want to show publicly that its allies, principally the Trinamool Congress, were voting against the bill. The Government ran away from the voting because it was in hopeless minority. The Congress party choreographed the whole debate so as to avoid the final voting.

It was a shameful day for Indian democracy. So at the stroke of midnight hour, the Indian parliament again made mockery of 1.2 billion Indians. You can’t trust this Government. It has hurt the credibility of Parliament. When cricketers fix matches they are banned for life. Who will punish these MPs?

The government knew its numbers very well and choreographed the debate in a manner that voting cannot be taken up today, says Arun Jaitley.