An irked Congress president Sonia Gandhi may ask Union parliamentary affairs minister Pawan Kumar Bansal to serve show-cause notices to at least 35 truant party Members of Parliament. They may have to explain why they were absent from the Lok Sabha on Monday when the nuclear liability bill issue came up and the government faced the opposition's ire.
The absence of these MPs made the government retreat from tabling the bill, it could have been outnumbered if the opposition called for a vote at the introductory stage. Just two weeks earlier, in her address to the Congress Parliamentary Party, she had warned that the problem of Mps absenting themselves would be dealt "seriously".
"The Congress president has been regularly telling the MPs to attend the Parliament. It seems all these appeals are falling in deaf ears. Many of our MPs don't take Parliament seriously," Leader of the Lok Sabha and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told Business Standard.
The party has 208 MPs in the Lok Sabha. According to sources, all were told to be in the House at noon, when the bill was scheduled for tabling. Amidst the opposition uproar, Gandhi turned around to see the party's strength and found a lot of seats vacant.
She immediately asked Bansal why the MPs were not present. Party sources say the leadership may decide to crack the whip as the absence would have led to "loss of face" if the Bill had been introduced and defeated at that stage itself, in case of voting by division.