Parliament Winter Session | Will Opposition put up a united front against resurgent BJP?

With Parliament convening on Monday (November 25) for the first day of its Winter Session, the Opposition’s INDIA bloc has a major challenge at hand: keeping a united front against a BJP-led NDA that is no longer encumbered by the gloom of its diminished Lok Sabha victory but one invigorated by massive poll triumphs in Maharashtra and Haryana.

The humiliating and “unexpected” poll routs that the Congress faced in the Maharashtra assembly poll on Saturday (November 23), coupled with its decimation by the BJP last month in Haryana and Jammu, has taken away much of the heft that the party had regained after the Lok Sabha polls. As such, with a contingent of 99 MPs in the Lower House while the Congress may still be the largest constituent of the INDIA bloc, its position as the fulcrum of the Opposition grouping has now come under enormous strain.

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INDIA bloc unity in jeopardy

Signs that the Congress’s recent electoral failures have imperilled the unity of the INDIA bloc, which has 234 MPs in the Lok Sabha against the NDA’s 293, are already evident. Soon after the Maharashtra results, the mercurial Mamata Banerjee’s TMC had raised a red-flag on the Congress’s continuing inability to halt the BJP’s victory march at the hustings.

Sources told The Federal that the Trinamool, which is the third largest constituent of the INDIA bloc with 29 Lok Sabha MPs, may skip the meeting of the floor leaders of the group convened by Congress president and Rajya Sabha’s Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge ahead of the Parliament session this morning.

It is also unclear whether Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will attend the meeting and if it does then to what extent it would take the Congress’s cue on issues in Parliament given that the two parties are set to contest against each other in the Delhi assembly polls scheduled early next year.

It is learnt that even the National Conference, which has just two Lok Sabha MPs but scored a huge win in the recent J&K Assembly polls, is also frustrated by the Congress’s “damaging statements” in J&K about the resolution brought by the Omar Abdullah government calling for the restoration of the erstwhile state’s “special status and constitutional guarantees”.

A senior Congress leader told The Federal that though they are “hopeful” of the INDIA bloc standing united in Parliament to corner the Centre on a host of issues, it is “difficult to say with any certainty right now whether this unity will extend beyond the floor of the House”.

Rift over Constitution event

A point of conflict that has emerged among some of the INDIA partners even before the commencement of the winter session is whether the group should attend or boycott the function scheduled on Tuesday at the Central Hall of the Old Parliament (now called the Samvidhaan Sadan) to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution.

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The Congress, sources said, wants the Opposition alliance to boycott the function citing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s silence, apathy and inaction over the prolonged ethnic violence in Manipur and the BJP’s continuing “assaults on the Constitution” but has not got any assurance so far from its allies on whether they agree with such a decision. The matter, sources said, is likely to be “on top of the agenda” for the INDIA bloc meeting convened by Kharge today.

“It is a very tricky issue. We can take the moral high ground, invoke Manipur and the way the BJP tramples upon the Constitution every day and boycott the ceremony but the BJP will certainly spin it around as an insult to Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Constitution and say that our hatred for Modi outweighs our respect for the Samvidhaan while continuing to call our ‘Save Constitution’ campaign a fake narrative... if we do decide to boycott, we will need to articulate our stand very carefully and very well,” a floor leader of one of the INDIA bloc parties told The Federal.

Adani, Manipur on Oppn agenda

There are, however, some issues on which there is unanimity within the INDIA bloc. At the customary all-party meeting chaired by Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh ahead of the winter session on Sunday, the Opposition pressed for a detailed discussion on controversial businessman Gautam Adani’s recent indictment in a bribery scandal by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The INDIA bloc has also pressed, yet again, for a discussion on the continuing ethnic violence in Manipur and

The Centre, however, hasn’t given any assurance about allowing a discussion on either of these crucial issues. Union parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju told reporters that allowing of disallowing the discussions will “is a matter that will be discussed at the meeting of the business advisory committee” of Parliament.

Sources said the Congress has also asked for discussion on the rising level of air pollution in the national capital, an issue that is likely to irk the AAP, which has been trying desperately to absolve its government in Delhi of any blame on this score.

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Consensus eludes Waqf Bill

Besides Adani and Manipur, another cause for acrimony between the Centre and the Opposition during the session is expected to be the Modi government push for getting the controversial Waqf Bill passed by Parliament.

The Bill had been referred to a Joint Committee of Parliament during the last session following uproar by the INDIA bloc MPs and discordant notes from some NDA constituents. The committee, headed by BJP MP Jagdambika Pal, is mandated to submit its report by the end of the first week of the winter session. The Opposition, which had several acrimonious exchanges with the Treasury MPs during the committee’s meetings, has urged the Centre to not bulldoze the Bill and plans to meet Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla in the coming week seeking an extension of the committee’s tenure to allow more deliberations. The Centre has, however, listed the Bill for consideration and passing during the winter session.

At Sunday’s all party meeting, the Samajwadi Party, the Left parties and the DMK made fervent appeals to the government to not move the Waqf Bill for passing until there is “complete consensus” in the Pal-headed joint committee on the scope and framework of the proposed law. Curiously, the Congress, which had opposed the Bill when it was introduced in the Lok Sabha, did not join the SP, DMK and Left parties in pressing the government for further discussions on the Bill.