Parliament set for another stormy session as Opposition ready to stall it over SIR

As it has now become a disturbing norm, the winter session of Parliament is expected to kick off on a stormy note on Monday (December 1) morning, with the Opposition continuing to insist on a discussion on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and the Centre resisting it.

At a series of meetings between leaders from both sides of the political divide on Sunday (November 30), Opposition parties from the INDIA bloc made it clear that they would continue to stall Parliament proceedings just like the monsoon session if the Treasury side did not concede a discussion on Monday itself on the SIR.

The only conciliatory gesture from the Opposition’s side was its willingness to accept the Centre’s assertion that while the SIR per se cannot be the sole subject of debate, as the government cannot be seen to be replying on matters within the express domain of the Election Commission, a wider debate on electoral reforms could be considered.

Warring Treasury and Opposition

Leaders who attended Sunday’s customary all-party meeting, steered by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, and meetings of the Business Advisory Committee of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha said the discussions, though cordial, typified the increasingly fraught relationship between the Treasury and the Opposition side. The Centre, while repeatedly assuring the Opposition of its willingness to “discuss and debate all issues”, maintained that legislative agenda for the upcoming session must take precedence over other discussions.

Also read: Parliament Winter session: Opposition to strongly push for discussion on SIR, national security

The INDIA bloc parties, which attended the meetings armed with a litany of issues they wanted debated – the SIR, the November 10 Red Fort car explosion, and other related matters of national security, rising pollution, obstructionist Governors in Opposition-ruled states and the recent opinion delivered by the Supreme Court in the Presidential Reference case, etc. – made it clear that while it was willing to pass the listed legislative agenda, the Centre would have to make concessions and allocate “equal time” to listen to the Opposition.

Bihar defeat, SIR, upcoming polls unite Opposition

For instance, at the BAC meeting of the Rajya Sabha, chaired by Vice President and Upper House Chairman CP Radhakrishnan, the government proposed a commemorative discussion on 150 years of Vande Mataram. While the Opposition members agreed, they tethered their consent to the government’s willingness to simultaneously fix time for a discussion on the SIR.

A similar script played out at the BAC meeting of the Lok Sabha, too, with a united INDIA bloc adamant that issues linked with the Election Commission and electoral reforms, including the SIR, be taken up on the winter session’s opening day and the Treasury side remaining non-committal with its standard “we will discuss” response.

With the Bihar electoral rout of the Grand Alliance and the wider Opposition’s nervousness over the ongoing SIR across nine States and three Union Territories – including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Pondicherry, where polls are due early next year – evidently weighing heavily on the INDIA bloc, its disparate constituents have clearly decided to look past their internal fissures for the moment and unite against the Centre on the SIR issue.

Even former Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD), which is not part of the INDIA bloc, joined the Opposition coalition in raising concerns over the transparency, timing and administration of the voter roll revisions.

Opposition ready to disrupt House

Sources said at the all-party meeting and then again at the Rajya Sabha BAC meeting all-party meeting, even veteran Samajwadi Party MP Ram Gopal Yadav bluntly told the Centre’s representatives – Union ministers Rajnath Singh, JP Nadda, Kiren Rijiju and Arjun Ram Meghwal – that his party would “not allow the House to function” if the government refuses a debate on the SIR.

Also read: Congress seeks all-party meet on Delhi blast, Parliament's Winter Session to be advanced

Yadav, along with other Opposition members from the Congress, Trinamool Congress, Left Parties and the DMK, are also learnt to have referred to the string of suicides committed by Booth Level Officers assigned to conduct the SIR across different states and to allegations of mass deletions already done in Bihar’s electoral rolls and now being replicated in other states.

Topic of national security

Beyond the SIR, the Opposition wants the Centre to commit to a clear timeline during the course of the winter session to discuss national security in the wake of the Red Fort car explosion, air pollution, financial relations between the Centre and States, the role of Governors in withholding assent to Bills and the recently notified labour codes, among other issues.

Gaurav Gogoi, the Congress’s deputy leader in the Lok Sabha, framed his party’s demands under the overarching theme of “security”, saying there must be discussions on national security, the “security of democracy”, “security of voter lists and election security”, economic security, health security in light of rising air pollution, and natural security considering the increasing frequency of extreme weather events.

Fifteen sittings

The Centre has listed 13 Bills and Supplementary Demands for Grants to be taken up during the 15 sittings of the winter session, which is set to conclude on December 19. Opposition leaders such as the Congress’s Jairam Ramesh and the Trinamool’s Derek O’Brien have also been critical of the length of the session, calling it the “shortest winter session” in the history of Parliament and claiming that it reaffirms the Opposition’s charge of continuing erosion of parliamentary democracy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s regime.

The INDIA bloc, which has found the SIR to be an issue it can collectively rally around at least during Parliament sessions if not beyond them, is expected to further discuss a united floor strategy against the Centre during a meeting convened by Congress president and Rajya Sabha’s Leader of Opposition, Mallikarjun Kharge, on Monday morning.

The NDA’s stunning triumph in the November 14 Bihar polls, following similarly surprising wins in Maharashtra, Haryana and Delhi over the past year, has signalled that the ruling combine has fully overcome the partial electoral setbacks suffered during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The INDIA bloc hopes to convey through its joint strategy in Parliament that it is still a formidable challenge to the Modi-led coalition.

Widening mistrust in INDIA bloc

How far the Opposition group succeeds, however, may also be determined not just by the government’s response to its demands but by the dynamics within the INDIA bloc too. Sources said while the bloc’s otherwise warring constituents like Trinamool and the Left parties and even the Congress, may currently find their interests aligned due to the threat that the SIR poses to their electoral footprint, mistrust among several of the INDIA partners has been widening steadily.

Also read: West Bengal 'SIR deaths' spark political storm: TMC, BJP trade charges

The Bihar poll campaign and the subsequent results have soured relations between Lalu Yadav’s RJD, the Congress, the Left parties and even the JMM, which was forced to stay out of the Bihar elections after being denied a “respectable share of seats” within the Grand Alliance. In Jammu and Kashmir, relations between the National Conference and the Congress have been deteriorating swiftly.

Sources told The Federal that several parties in the INDIA bloc are also not in tune with the Congress and the Samajwadi Party’s stance of “disrupting proceedings throughout the session” if the Centre doesn’t concede the discussions they have demanded. Leaders from the CPM, the National Conference, the DMK and Sharad Pawar’s NCP-SP told The Federal that they would rather prefer finding a “middle ground” that could allow them to “keep our views on different issues clearly before the country through Parliament despite the constraints being deliberately placed on us by the government”.