New Delhi: Any hope of a return to normalcy in LS was apparently dashed when the opposition stepped up its offensive and submitted a notice to oust the Speaker. In a surprising end to a week-long deadlock, fissures within the opposition were laid bare, with pragmatic voices wanting to be heard on key issues in the House overpowering those who favored uncompromising rigidity and confrontation.The LS is functioning normally despite the government not agreeing to the conditions set by the Congress: allowing LoP Rahul Gandhi to speak, correcting the Speaker’s “baseless” claim that he had to ask the Prime Minister not to speak during the debate on the motion of thanks to the President for his speech as Congress MPs planned to do something unprecedented, and investigating why BJP MP Nishikant Dubey did not switch off the microphone when he attacked Nehru-Gandhi’s family.There is a general feeling within the government that it would have achieved a better outcome in the battle of wits without any concessions to key Congress demands to allow Rahul to speak first and to revoke the suspension of eight MPs to defuse the crisis that has bogged down the proceedings.Helping the government resolve the impasse is the enthusiasm of some of the BJP’s main regional rivals to give the party a role and allow discussions on regional issues. Bengal and Tamil Nadu, where the TMC and DMK rule, are about to hold general elections, while the political atmosphere is heating up in Uttar Pradesh, where the Samajwadi Party is the main opposition party, just a year away.While the TMC made its differences clear by not signing the notice, MPs from different non-Congress opposition parties said many of them did not want the first half of the session to be consumed by deadlock.PPP allies across party lines stood firmly with the government, supporting the speaker and criticizing the opposition’s targeting of the constitutional office.Birla’s decision to stay away from the meeting until the notice was dealt with out of moral integrity suggested that the matter might be discussed later in the meeting.
