Opposition rejects PM's contention on Anna issue

TNN | Aug 18, 2011, 01.47AM IST

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Read More:Manmohan Singh|Lokpal Bill|Congress|Anna Hazare

NEW DELHI: The Opposition in both Houses of Parliament on Wednesday strongly rebuffed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's attempt to portray the entire Anna Hazare episode as a confrontation between Parliament and civil society. Opposition MPs did hold that it was the sole prerogative of Parliament to make laws, and that there could be some genuine reservations about the Jan Lokpal Bill, but maintained that the way the government was throttling voices of protest and dissent from the civil society could simply not be condoned. "People of India are exasperated with corruption. They are exasperated with this government and its inability to do anything...Has this government lost all sense of statecraft on how to handle political agitations?" said the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley. Brinda Karat of CPM, in turn, said Hazare's arrest was "a blatant assault on the democratic rights of citizens", with the government being "captive to corporates" and sending "civil society to jail". Holding that the government's "fairy tales" were being "thoroughly exposed" despite the intervention of "Prince Charming", Karat said it could not use the "shoulders of Parliament to shoot at people of this country".

Jaitley, on his part, accused the government of "smugness", "arrogance of power" and "hiding behind the men in uniform" instead of summoning the requisite political will to fight corruption. "It's time for the PM and political leadership to stand up, take bold decisions and go to root of the issue...It's a wake-up call for all of us to put our house in order...people are getting restless," he said. He asked whether the Congress was willing to give a guarantee that it will not hold a protest having more than 5,000 people in the future, while denouncing the 22 restrictions imposed by Delhi Police on Hazare's fast, from limiting the number of people attending the protest to its duration and the number of vehicles allowed. The PM's ploy of playing it as a civil society versus political class conflict did, of course, find some resonance in Lalu Prasad's speech in Lok Sabha, where he reacted sharply to how the Anna Hazare movement was painting the entire political class as black. "This is a dangerous trend. When Annaji came to meet me to explain his Lokpal Bill, I told him that very clearly. It is an extremely worrying situation that copies of a Bill that is under consideration by the parliamentary standing committee are burnt...If their movement means that they say all political parties are corrupt, that is not acceptable. Parliament is supreme and nobody can challenge that," said Lalu. Union home minister P Chidambaram, in his response later in the day, continued to play on that theme, when after describing the circumstances that led to Anna's arrest and subsequent release on Tuesday, he pleaded that these administrative issues should not be confused with the real issue before it. "The real issue is who drafts the laws and that is the Parliament. People can agitate, they can vote us out of power but the only thing that they cannot do is to legislate. That is the sole prerogative of Parliament." First time Congress MP Meenakshi Natarajan was also eloquent in her ode to the supremacy of Parliament. "I am also a member of that standing committee before which the Lokpal Bill has been placed. We assured Annaji that we will give a Bill of which this country will be proud. But if in the rush to make a particular law the supremacy of Parliament is undermined, that is not to be tolerated," she said.