Disruptions in Parliament: Some method in the madness?

The Government wants to discredit the Opposition as well as the Parliament, says first time MP Sanjay Singh of AAP. Concurs T Mohammed Basheer of the Indian Union Muslim League. “There is a deliberate move to dismantle the basic ethos of parliamentary democracy; the Modi govt and the RSS have more dangerous designs.”

The manner in which the Lok Sabha was made to pass the Union Budget without discussion in a matter of 30 minutes was a pointer. And so was the sustained reluctance and refusal of the Lok Sabha Speaker and the Rajya Sabha Chairman to suspend or expel 64 Members from the LS and just two Members from the RS and allow proceedings in the two Houses.

The Opposition alleged that there was a diabolical plan to disrupt the proceedings and ensure that no discussion took place on critical national issues. The Government in turn accused the Opposition of stalling the two Houses and reiterated that they were willing to have a debate on anything.

The disruptions were being engineered by the Government, the Opposition alleged and pointed out that the allies of the BJP in the NDA were the ones disrupting the two Houses. The issues surely could have been settled within the ‘Parivar’ ?

Their apprehension does not seem misplaced.

Indeed, the sustained campaign to weaken Parliament assumes significance in the light of what Subramanian Swamy, now a BJP MP, wrote in Frontline way back in 2000. The RSS, he had claimed then, had three broad objectives:

• The first component of the game plan is to discredit RSS’ opponents and protect the converts.
• The second component is to shake public confidence in every institution
• The third component is to ready the blueprints for implementing the agenda.

A draft circulated by the RSS in 1998 apparently had proposed that the present bicameral Parliament would be replaced by a three-tier structure. The draft, Swamy wrote, carried the following proposals: “At the apex will be a Guru Sabha of sadhus and sanyasis nominated by the President who is elected by a Lok Sabha constituted on a limited electoral college of primary and secondary school teachers, the rolls of which will be prepared by the HRD Ministry...”

“All legislation and money bills will have to originate in Guru Sabha and be passed by it before being sent to Lok Sabha. The Guru Sabha will also be the judicial commission to nominate Supreme Court Judges, and impeach them. In between Guru Sabha and Lok Sabha, there will be a Raksha Sabha of serving armed forces chiefs and retired soldiers who can decide when to declare an Emergency...India would be, it seems,

The RSS plan to change the Constitution is no secret. RSS ideologues have been deliberating on a new Constitution ‘more suited to Indian culture, conditions, needs and sensitivity’. Thus, attempts to undermine Parliament during the last four years do not appear to be accidents.