Winter session: Tough questions that opposition will ask UPA

The Bhaujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party are all set to embarrass the United Progressive Alliance as the winter session of the Parliament begins on Tuesday. The political chaos surrounding the Uttar Pradesh elections will now be played out in New Delhi. While political parties from UP will bring up regional politics in the Lok Sabha, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Left will raise issues pertaining to price rise, black money and the Lokpal Bill.    

The members of the National Democratic Alliance have decided to boycott Home Minister P Chidambaram just the way the Congress boycotted George Fernandes after his reinstatement as defence minister in the A B Vajpayee-government on the Tehelka arms expose. The BJP wants Chidambaram to resign till his name is cleared in the 2G scam. In fact, it's is convinced that there is no way pressure should be released on the home minister for agreeing with former telecom minister A Raja to go for the telecom policy in allotment of the spectrum that cost the exchequer losses worth crores.

The Rajya Sabha will be adjourned on Tuesday in memory of two sitting members -- Dr Ram Dayal Munda of Jharkhand and Silvius Condpan of Assam -- who died, recently.

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani will move an adjournment motion, which is unlikely to be accepted by the government if it warrants voting. Importantly, the BJP and the Left will support each other's motions on black money and price rise respectively.

Mayawati's MPs will insist that the national parties clear their stand on the proposed division of Uttar Pradesh. Mulayam Singh Yadav's is trying to distance itself from the UPA as the assembly elections inch closer. Yadav has said time and again that his biggest mistake was to save the UPA government on July 22, 2008 during the confidence vote over the Indo-US nuclear deal in the Lok Sabha.

On many occasions, the SP has been siding the UPA in New Delhi while standing up against it in Uttar Pradesh. But Mayawati's aggressive politics no longer leaves room for the SP to take such covert support.

According to the assessment of the Congress, Mayawati is not likely to back the UPA in New Delhi. Earlier this year, Mayawati had asked her party's MPs to support the UPA on the issue of Public Accounts Committee's 2G report. But now her stand is clear. Instead of taking on Mulayam, she has branded the Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi as her number one enemy. 

In view of the UPA allies like the Trinmool Congress, Nationalist Congress Party and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam sulking on a number of issues and the BSP's sharpened attack against the Congress, the political scenario in New Delhi is becoming more and more interesting.   

The Congress's assessment is that this winter session will pass without any critical event challenging its stability. It is confident that in case of any political crisis the UPA allies will continue to chase it. However, the party is well aware that the BSP will become difficult to chase while the SP will take its pound of flesh.       

The coming winter session will see the Parliament function for 17 days after deducting weekends and the Muharram holiday. The government wants the house to adopt 31 legislations in 21 sittings -- the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill, Pension's Bill, Lokpal Bill, the Constitution Amendment Bill for 33 per cent women's reservation in Lok Sabha.

Advani's proposal to NDA MPs to disclose their foreign assets, if any, is a clever move to push government on disclosing the names of 700 account holders in the HSBC Bank in Geneva. The BJP thinks that there is tremendous pressure on the government from those who are caught with black money in foreign banks. They are powerful enough to pressure the government to strictly hold on to terms and conditions under which these names were obtained from France.

Amid all of this, rumour mills were abuzz that a few BJP MPs or those connected with the party, particularly a famous industrialist who is funding the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, are among those listed with accounts in the HSBC bank. To counter such unsubstantiated talk, Advani has said that all 215 NDA MPs will declare under oath that they have no illegal assets in foreign bank accounts.

Advani is doing all in his power to pressure the Manmohan Singh government, especially Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. At the all-party meet called by Speaker Meira Kumar on November 17, Mukherjee is said to have lost his temper when the BJP, the Communist Party of India Marxist's Basudev Acharya and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav insisted that he should reveal the names of the Indian account holders in Swiss banks.       

At the meet, Mukherjee accepted that his government had in its possession a list of Indian account holders who have black money stashed aboard, but said that if the names were revealed India would stop receiving vital information. 

According to reports, more than Rs 3,000 crore has been found in foreign banks in the last six months. Advani says that the nation has the right to know the names of Indians who deposited black money in foreign banks and betrayed the nation by playing havoc with the economy.

More than Rs 18,000 crore of black money has been traced by the tax department over the last few years, but the government has been stubbornly guarding the names of account holders, say sources. Mukherjee has argued that the list of account holders in foreign banks is obtained under the Double Tax Avoidance agreement and the government can only verify if these Indian account holders have paid tax in India or not. Now, the BJP is expected to storm the House demanding that the names of these account holders be revealed.

Apart from this, the issue of price rise and the Lokpal Bill is also expected to create a ruckus during the winter session.  Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Chief Economic Adviser to the finance ministry Dr Kaushik Basu have exhausted all arguments to defend the current economic trends. If by January inflation doesn't come under control Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh will face the worst-ever political crisis of his career.

The cascading effects of rising price will be politically unbearable for the Congress. Reportedly, Basu has been saying that if inflation is controlled then unemployment could rise. Many experts have been saying that, in spite of the best economic brains this government doesn't have flexibility "on managing the supply side of the economy."

Sources in the Congress claim that the Lokpal bill will be introduced in Parliament at the fag end of the winter session. "This Parliament will never pass the Jan Lokpal Bill and the watered down version will not be accepted to the BJP who wants to go with Team Anna till the 2014 elections. The Lokpal Bill will meet the same fate as the Women's Bill," said a senior BJP MP.