Parliament closes without business for 12th day

NEW DELHI - Both houses of parliament were adjourned Monday, again without conducting any business, as the stalemate over appointing a joint parliamentary committee to probe the alleged scam in 2G spectrum allotment continued for the 12th day.

The government’s every effort to break the logjam has yielded no result and question hours in both houses of parliament were derailed again with an unrelenting opposition persisting with its demand that a parliamentary panel probe the controversial second generation telephony spectrum allocation in 2008.

There were moments of peace, but these were very brief. Speaker Meira Kumar asked Lok Sabha members to join her in congratulating Indian sportspersons for their best ever medals tally in Asian Games in China.

However, as soon as she finished reading out her felicitation for the Indian medal winners at the Asiad, opposition MPs trooped near her podium and started shouting slogans “We want JPC”. The speaker then adjourned the house till 12 noon.

When the house resumed the sitting at noon, the sloganeering continued and deputy speaker Karia Munda ordered the adjournment of the Lok Sabha till Tuesday.

Scenes in the Rajya Sabha were no different as the upper house was also adjourned soon after it met after the weekend. Chairman Hamid Ansari adjourned the house to meet again at noon and then for the rest of the day when MPs met at 12.

This is the 12th successive day of the Nov 9-Dec 13 winter session that parliament has not transacted any significant business and both houses have witnessed adjournments barely minutes after meeting.

There is no end in sight to the deadlock as the opposition has rebuffed the government’s every request to it to give up the demand for a JPC probe into the scandal.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee Sunday spoke to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders Sushma Swaraj and L.K. Advani and Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Sitaram Yechury to break the logjam.

But the opposition leaders refused to give up their JPC demand even as the government maintained its stance that such a panel was not possible to inquire into the allegations.

The two houses had some 125 working hours scheduled in the first 11 days of the session.

According to the PRS Legislative Research, the Lok Sabha has met for only 5.4 hours in 12 days of the session, which is only nine percent of the scheduled time.

The opposition, which has united over the 2G issue, and the government are blaming each other for the wasted parliament time that has also cost the national exchequer over Rs.90 crore.