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Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi
The five-week monsoon session of Parliament on Friday ended on a mild note with both the ruling coalition and the opposition acknowledging that mutual restraint by both sides would help them focus on various issues, without needless wrath and rancour.
Unlike the budget session of Parliament, when the government and the opposition went for each other's jugular, with both Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and leader of opposition Sonia Gandhi verbally clashing with each other, this time around both of the leaders did not clash directly.
While Vajpayee underscored that there had to be a limit among Lok Sabha members for levelling allegations and counter-allegations, Sonia hoped that his government would provide the opposition opportunity to raise important issues, which it could not raise.
The restraint between the two sections of the house can be attributed to the commendable efforts of speaker G M C Balyogi.
Appealing to the members' sense of reason, he railroaded them to accept what had been plaguing Parliament for almost the last three decades -- financial loss due to constant disruptions.
Balyogi's efforts have already had the desired effect, with the members discontinuing rushing to the well of the house to press their points of view.
The start of the session witnessed numerous walkouts by the opposition in both houses.
The treasury and the opposition benches locked horns on all the major issues -- the Agra summit, the stock market and the UTI scams, Tehelka expose, the government's economic and agricultural policies, the saffronisation of education and the divestment of the public sector undertakings.
On several occasions, the speaker had to use his persuasive prowess to bring down soaring temperatures in the house.
While the government braved opposition flak for the most of the session, the former had to go on the backfoot when the issue of Tehelka using prostitutes during the course of its investigations was revealed.
Meanwhile, in Friday's Congress parliamentary party meeting Sonia Gandhi took stock of the party's efforts in nailing the government on various issues.
She said, "There is disenchantment with the National Democratic Alliance and a wind of goodwill for the Congress party is blowing once again throughout the country."
However, the Congress chief's apparent optimism could scarcely conceal the fact that the opposition has failed to dislodge the government, even as the prime minister seems to have succeeded in mobilising his NDA allies to defend his government.
But despite its lofty assertions, the government's economic policies, especially its handling of the stockmarket scam, the UTI controversy and its evident hurry in completing the divestment process, has brought its political stock a couple of notches down in the eyes of the people.
"Had the opposition been effective, it would have hit (us) more and missed less. But it has only succeeded in making a lot of noise and, indeed, a nuisance of itself," pointed out senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Jagdish Prasad Mathur.
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