Parliament gridlock: Is obstruction in ‘favour of democracy’? BJP once believed so | Political Pulse News,The Indian Express

Sushma Swaraj in 2012 said that ‘not allowing Parliament to function is a form of democracy like any other form’, and Arun Jaitley held that ‘parliamentary obstruction is not undemocratic’.

Parliament has been in gridlock for the past one week, with the Opposition and the government trading barbs over the suspension of Opposition MPs in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, and a lack of discussion on issues as demanded by anti-BJP parties. As of Thursday, 23 Opposition MPs from the Rajya Sabha have been suspended till the end of the week and four Congress members of the Lok Sabha have been suspended for the rest of the Monsoon session.

The government has accused the Opposition of disrupting proceedings repeatedly over the years. But, not long ago, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was in power and it was the BJP, then in the Opposition, that justified the disruption of Parliament. At the time, senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley, who was Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, said that when Parliament “is used to ignore issues” then “obstruction of Parliament is in the favour of democracy”. He later claimed that there were “occasions when obstruction in Parliament brings greater benefits to the country”.

While Jaitley led the BJP’s charge in the Upper House, it was Sushma Swaraj in the Lok Sabha. When the oil-for-food scandal broke during UPA-I, Jaswant Singh headed the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha but Jaitley and Swaraj were the BJP faces who led the offensive, resulting in the disruption of Parliament in the winter of 2005 and then External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh’s eventual resignation.

The multiple ministerial resignations during UPA-II — from A Raja to Dayanidhi Maran and Shashi Tharoor to PK Bansal and Ashwani Kumar — followed vociferous demands led again by Jaitley and Sushma, leaders of the opposition in the two Houses. The BJP also brought Parliament to a standstill over the 2G scam in 2010, the Central Vigilance Commissioner’s (CVC) appointment in 2011, and coal block allocation in 2012. The entire Winter session of 2010 was washed out when the BJP set the constitution of a joint parliamentary committee as a precondition for allowing Parliament to function.

Sushma Swaraj on record

https://indianexpress.com/article/political-pulse/parliament-gridlock-democracy-bjp-8057195/


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