Bharatiya Janata Party has claimed that it exposed the United Progressive Alliance government during the Budget session, which ended on Friday, and brought out the internal contradictions within the ruling alliance by exposing scams and the ineffective handling of law and order situation in the country.
The BJP leaders lamented the manner in which the government misused the Central Bureau of Investigation to save itself from being voted out in the cut motions introduced by the opposition.
Sushma Swaraj, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and Arun Jaitley, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, on Friday expressed satisfaction over the just-concluded budget session of Parliament, claiming that their party sustained focus on price rise right from the beginning of the session till its end through a volley of questions, cut-motions, adjournments, walkouts and a massive demonstration in New Delhi.
They were, however, least troubled by Parliament Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal ruing at a separate press conference that very little legislative business could be conducted because of obstructions in both the Houses (the Lok Sabha lost 70 hours and Rajya Sabha 40 hours).
Bansal also regretted that the Opposition did not allow question hour for 11 days, seven days in Rajya Sabha and four days in Lok Sabha.
Though the Opposition unity that the BJP had mustered on issues like price rise and IPL scam collapsed when Sushma Swaraj's cut-motion on petroleum price hike was put to vote, she claimed that her party never expected the cut-motion to succeed but it certainly showed the mirror to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh -- that he is heading a minority
government.
But for support of BSP's 22 MPs, the government would have fallen, as only 289 votes were cast against the cut-motion and it showed that the government definitely does not have more than 272 members in the Lok Sabha to claim to enjoy majority, Sushma affirmed.
She said the boycott of voting by Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party showed that their claim of being the opposition was fake. She said about them: Fikra nahi mehangai ki, dar CBI ka (no worries about the price rise, just fear of CBI).
She said it was due to the fear of the CBI going harsh against their party chiefs in their assets cases that these parties succumbed to bail out the government. The BJP has decided to have a sustained campaign against the misuse of CBI by those in power.
As part of that exercise, the BJP MPs demonstrated in the Parliament House complex on Thursday and a delegation led by BJP Parliamentary Party chairman Lal Krishna Advani on Friday submitted a memorandum to President Pratibha Patil on 'blatant misuse of CBI by the ruling UPA'.
CPI-M joins issue with BJP
The Communist Party of India-Marxist also alleged that the Congress-led government was misusing the CBI and intelligence agencies for its 'narrow political purposes'.
In a statement issued in New Delhi, the party said: "Instead of using the CBI to investigate economic crimes and cases of corruption, the ruling party is unscrupulously utilising it for its narrow political purposes".
"The brazen manner in which the CBI investigations have been used to muster support for the cut motion is bringing the agency into disrepute. The ruling party cannot be allowed to bring the CBI into disrepute," the statement said.
Slamming the Congress, the CPI-M said: "The revelation of phone tapping of four political leaders further reinforces the charge that the Congress party is utilising security and intelligence agencies such as the IB for its political interests. Using these agencies for such purposes should be made illegal and liable for criminal prosecution."
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