It was late on Thursday night that BJP MPs got a message from the party that they would have to reach Parliament early to stage a dharna at the statue of Mahatma Gandhi, a strategy generally adopted by Opposition to protest against government.
On Friday morning, party MPs assembled at the protest site in the complex holding banners which said "Parliament should function", "Sonia, Rahul shame shame, scams and scams in Congress states" and "Sonia, Rahul tell us where the corruption money has gone."
This was part of the ruling side's aggressive brazen it out tactic, as Parliament remained paralysed for the fourth day. Soon after the protests, Lok Sabha adjourned in four minutes. The total time lost so far in Lok Sabha is 94 per cent and in Rajya Sabha 88 per cent, according PRS data. The maximum time lost in Lok Sabha since 2009 was 94 per cent in the Winter session of 2010, when the then BJP-led Opposition's demand for setting up a JPC to examine the 2G scam stalled business.
The ruling party protest drew potshots from Opposition, which has been demanding resignations of BJP leaders facing the heat in the Lalit Modi and Vyapam issues. "Why was the ruling party sitting on a dharna? Who were they making their demands to? Were they making their demands to God?" JD-U's Sharad Yadav asked.
BSP supremo Mayawati said "rather than hold dharna, demonstrations, the government should take action against people who have violated norms."
Aam Admi Party's Kumar Vishwas tweeted "the government is sitting on a dharna outside Parliament. May be their demand is to Obama (US President)."
The BJP, which was critical of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal sitting on dharna, drew a distinction between the two. "There is no comparison with Kejriwal's dharna," said union minister Prakash Javadekar. The government's plea was that the party decided on the protests since Opposition did not want discussion. Though union ministers did not participate in the dharna, some of them–Ravi Shankar Prasad, Nirmala Sitharaman and Javadekar–interacted with protesting MPs.
The treasury's eye for an eye strategy has failed to tame the Opposition, which refused to budge from its demand for resignations of external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and chief ministers Vasundhara Raje and Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
Asked if government would let the session get washed away and blame the Opposition for it, Javadekar said "We are hopeful that collective wisdom will prevail and the Congress will realise its mistake." Javadekar said Opposition protests could mellow down by next week, but asked what his hopes were based on, he said "optimism".
He castigated Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Swaraj and sought an apology from him. "He crossed all limits of decency.... The language he used nobody uses. We still refer to them as Rahulji, Soniaji.... He said Modi's silence will help. We say the more he speaks the more it will help us."
Union minister Nitin Gadkari has threatened to file a defamation case if Gandhi did not apologise for saying that Swaraj had committed a criminal act by helping Lalit Modi.
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