UPA’s blunders have led to crises in House
While it is unfortunate that little meaningful business could be conducted in Parliament after the two Houses met on the very first day following a recess in the Budget Session, the fact is that disruptions will continue to mar the proceedings if the Congress-led UPA Government remains insensitive to the people's demand for good governance, continues to unfairly target leaders of Opposition parties and brazenly protects its own with the help of doctored reports. This is why appeals by neither Prime Minister Manmohan Singh nor Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari have made a dent in the resolve of the Opposition to let the business of the House be done without obstruction. It makes no sense for Mr Singh to request for co-operation when his own party members have been indulging in mud-slinging with the intent to deflect attention from the Government's blunders, both in repeatedly failing to fix the responsibility over rising crimes against women in Delhi and for not taking the blame for scams such as in the distribution of licences for 2G Spectrum and in the allocation of coal blocks. Mounting anger of the people over the law and order situation in the country's Capital is evident in the large protests on the streets, following the police apathy over the rape and mutilation of a five-year old. The Government does not appear to be bothered, and is attempting to suppress the protests by force — shutting down Metro stations and barricading areas like India Gate and Delhi Police Headquarters. Union Minister for Home Affairs Sushil Kumar Shinde's remark that action against police personnel would be taken once the inquiry is completed against them, is not a credible explanation. The parents of the five-year old victim had accused the police of trying to bribe them into hushing up the case, days ago. The inquiry should have been held promptly and results out by now. Also, the complaint by the parents ought to have been ground enough for the police to file a first information report against the accused official and arrest him. The fact is that both Delhi Police and the Union Home Ministry have learned nothing from the December 16 incident of the rape of a 23-year old girl in a moving bus in the city, and have behaved as callously as they had then.
Meanwhile, the Opposition is also livid over the draft report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on 2G Spectrum scam, which has reportedly devoted two-thirds of its space to condemn the policies and personalities of the NDA regime, and completely glossed over the grave mistakes that both the Prime Minister and the Union Minister for Finance P Chidambaram committed in allowing the 2G Spectrum scam to be crafted and executed. Worse, the report gets leaked even before it reaches the hands of all the members of the JPC. How does the Government expect the Opposition to take the issue lying downIJ
If these incidents were not bad enough, we have the shocking case where Union Minister for law and Justice Ashwani Kumar has proceeded to surreptitiously suggest changes in a status report on the probe in coal block allocation irregularities, which the Central Bureau of Investigation is to file before the Supreme Court. Should not the Opposition be baying for his blood in ParliamentIJ