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Congress disrupts Parliament again

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee today rejected outright the Congress party's repeated demands in the Lok Sabha for deletion of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's name from the Bofors chargesheet.

The vociferous demand from the principal opposition members fell flat when Vajpayee asked them why they shied away from their initial demand for a debate on the issue.

The prime minister said the government was ready for a full-fledged debate on the issue even after Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Arun Jaitely's clarification yesterday that the executive could not decide, file or alter a chargesheet.

Vajpayee pointed out that Madhavrao Scindia, deputy leader of the Congress group in the House, had given notice for a debate, but promptly withdrew it when the government accepted the demand.

Subsequently, the House took up the election of the deputy speaker.

The Congress members had sought to raise the chargesheet issue soon after the House assembled. Both Scindia and Mani Shankar Ayar were seen asking all the party members to rise to their feet to put up a joint demand. Speaker G M C Balayogi had even admonished Scindia and Aiyar for trying to raise an issue that was clarified by the government yesterday.

But the Congress members insisted that the prime minister who was not present in the House at that point of time yesterday should come forth with a reply to their demand.

When Vajpayee started to respond, some Congress members tried to interrupt him with individual observations and demands.

In the Rajya Sabha, the Opposition today criticised the government for not building consensus on issues of national importance and acting in haste to file a chargesheet in the Bofors case to malign Rajiv Gandhi.

Resuming the debate on the motion of thanks to the President for his address to Parliament Saroj Dubey (Rashtriya Janata Dal) said the inclusion of Rajiv Gandhi's name in the CBI chargesheet was politically motivated.

She demanded that a high-level committee be set up to investigate intelligence failure in Kargil. She also called for modernisation of the defence forces to meet any future challenge from Pakistan.

Pranab Mukherjee (Congress) criticised the government for unnecessarily raising the controversy by naming Rajiv Gandhi in the chargesheet. He said the government wanted constructive support from the Opposition but had chargesheeted Rajiv Gandhi knowing fully well that he could not defend himself.

He said the government was on record saying that the Bofors case would be filed after the receipt of the sixth set of papers from Switzerland. The papers had not yet come but the government showed great hurry to file the case with the sole objective of maligning Rajiv Gandhi.

Referring to the government's proposal for a fixed five-year-term for the Lok Sabha and state assemblies, he said this would only institutionalise political instability in the country.

He also opposed the idea of proxy voting for paramilitary forces as it would not guarantee secrecy of ballot.

UNI

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