Bihar mandate is not for unjustified disruptions
It is being anticipated that the defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance in the Bihar Assembly election will propel the Opposition to be more aggressive during the coming Winter Session of Parliament and even stall the proceedings. If indeed that is going to be the Opposition's strategy, it is unfortunate. As Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu rightly remarked, the Bihar result is not a mandate for the NDA’s rivals to stall the two Houses. Enough damage had been done to legislative business in the Monsoon Session, when critical Bills such as that pertaining to the Goods and Services Tax regime could not be adopted because the Congress-led Opposition obstructed the proceedings on various grounds, including the demand for the resignation of a certain Union Minister and a BJP Chief Minister both of whom have performed admirably. The Government and the party had categorically rejected the demand, and it is likely that the Congress along with its friends, buoyed by the Bihar success, will press with added vigour to secure those resignations. In other words, it is possible that the functioning of the two Houses can be adversely affected yet again. The Congress keeps on saying that it wants Parliament to function and that the Government must reach out to it to ensure that. This will surely happen; senior BJP leaders have said the party will meet Opposition leaders and seek to win their cooperation in getting the GST Bill passed. The problem seems to be that the Congress does not want it to appear that the Bill is a success story for the BJP-led Government. But then the Government is only taking forward a legislation envisaged by the previous Congress-led regime, and nobody is denying that the Congress is the original author of the proposal. There should, thus, be no need to make this into an ego issue. The Opposition must rise above scoring petty political points in the country's larger interest. In any case, the Congress can gloat over its ‘success' in compelling the Government to dump the land acquisition Bill; it has now been left to the States to evolve their own acquisition legislations, which will get the Central nod.
The Bihar battle is now in the past, and the Nitish Kumar-led alliance secured a win on the plank of, among other issues, development. As a consuming State, Bihar will be among the biggest beneficiaries of the GST system. Mr Nitish Kumar understands this well, and so he must add his support to the Government on the legislation, regardless of the fact that only recently he was locked in a bitter contest against the BJP in the State. It's not as if everyone in the opposition ranks is opposed to the Bill; West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, one of the BJP-led regime's fiercest critics, has been supportive of the GST. So have a few other Opposition leaders. It's for the Congress and the left to see reason and not disrupt for the sake of disruption.