CPI-M lashes Congress, Trinamool over Lokpal fiasco

Communist Party of India - Marxist leader Sitaram Yechury on Friday blamed the Congress-ed government and its allies for the chaos in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday night, which led  to the adjournment of the House sine die without the passage of the Lokpal Bill.

He lashed out at the Congress and its ally Trinamool congress for "engineering" a situation which made it impossible to transact any business.

"Trinamool helped the Congress Party by insisting that the word Lokayukta should be dropped from the Lokpal Bill before extending its support. Trinamool brought in the issue of federalism and curtailment of powers of the states in case the Centre enacts the Lokpal Bill," Yechury told rediff.com in an informal discussion on Friday.

Yechury claimed that the Union government was not very keen to introduce the Lokpal Bill in Rajya Sabha as it did not have the required majority to get it passed.

"Till 9 pm, senior Cabinet ministers Pranab Mukherjee and Kapil Sibal, assisted by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Bansal, were talking to various political parties including the Rashtriya Janata Dal headed by Lalu Prasad to muster the requisite numbers for the Bill, but they failed to do so," he said.

He said that the whole "drama" was choreographed by the government to avoid voting on the bill, as it would have been defeated since the ruling alliance did not have the numbers on its side.

"We hold the government directly responsible for trying to manipulate proceedings in the House to its advantage. Their main job was to stop three major amendments approved by the Lok Sabha. This is the ninth time that the anti-corruption bill could not be passed. It is unfortunate that this should have happened. We raised the issue with Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari and asked him if the session could continue beyond 12. He told us that permission of the President is needed in such an event. We felt that the permission was not required. We could have continued the debate on Saturday as this had happened earlier. Even the Supreme Court of India had already held this as constitutional in a verdict in 2010," Yechury remarked.