India opposes UPA's plan for tainted politicos, hands down

Rahul Gandhi has spoken his mind. First in a letter to prime minister Manmohan Singh, he said he did not favour the ordinance to help convicted lawmakers.

Then on Friday he went public and blasted the government, terming the ordinance “completely nonsense”, at the risk of going against the PM and his cabinet. “In my opinion, it should be torn up and thrown away,” he said.

Insiders in the government admit that Rahul was not party to the decision, as he had not attended core group meetings on September 13 and 20, where the ordinance was discussed and approved before putting it on the cabinet agenda.

But senior party leaders added that he had put his views against the law at the party’s parliamentary party meeting during the monsoon session of Parliament. “In fact, it was due to him that the bill was not taken up on the last day of the Lok Sabha, even while it was listed on the agenda,” a top leader said.

Soon after Rahul’s outburst during his unscheduled and impromptu visit to the Press Club of India, where his party’s chief spokesman Ajay Maken was facing a volley of questions, finance minister P Chidambaram and law minister Kapil Sibal made frantic calls to the PM, advising him to retract the ordinance.

Singh, who is in New York attending the UN General Assembly session, conceded that the Congress vice-president had written to him before making the statement. He, however, said the cabinet will reconsider the matter once he’s back in the country.

The ordinance sought to reverse the Supreme Court’s July 10 judgment on immediate disqualification of any MP, MLA or MLC convicted for more than two years.

While Rahul stayed for just four minutes to give his view and left saying he has other work to do, Maken who had till then been defending the ordinance said Rahul has clarified the party line and that is the new Congress line.

Rahul’s stand has left not only the PM and the government embarrassed, but also his mother Congress president Sonia Gandhi. For, the government had consulted Sonia Gandhi on the matter. Besides approving it at the core group meeting, Chidambaram and Sibal had a word with her again on Thursday evening before going to Rashtrapati Bhavan to meet president Pranab Mukherjee.

President Mukherjee had called three ministers — home, law and parliamentary affairs — and raised questions over the timing and the need for an ordinance.

After meeting the BJP delegation, the president had asked the ministers to explain why they were in such a hurry when there was no political consensus and when a bill with exact provisions was under the consideration of a parliamentary standing committee.

After meeting Mukherjee, the ministers were certain that he was hesitating to sign the ordinance, particularly because the Supreme Court had rejected the government’s petition to review its July 10 ruling.

Senior party leaders, however, say Rahul Gandhi’s move has taken the sting out of BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. A party insider said Rahul felt taking a moral ground would sway the youth in the party’s favour. “This is part of a strategy he chalked out with the party general secretaries on how the party should distance itself from the government’s controversial decisions impacting its poll prospects,” he said.

The countdown for opposing the ordinance started at Rahul’s Tuglaq Lane office-cum-residence on Thursday. The first hint of Rahul’s opposition came on Thursday, when minister of state and a member of his brigade Milind Deora tweeted that “legalities aside allowing convicted MPs/ MLAs retain seats in the midst of an appeal can endanger already eroding public faith in democracy”.

On Friday morning, Rahul met his backroom boys, including K Raju, Sachin Rao, K Mohan Gopal, KB Biju and others. It was decided that Rahul would issue a statement asking the government to withdraw the ordinance. Once the decision was taken, he rang up his chief spokesman Ajay Maken, who was addressing the press. Insiders in his office say he didn’t take anybody’s advice while telling Maken that he would come straight to the press club to make an announcement. 

At the press club, Rahul said the argument given in his organisation is that it is for “political considerations” and that everybody does it — the Congress does this, the BJP does this, the Samajwadi Party, the JD(U) does this.

“It is time to stop this nonsense, political parties, mine and all others... If you want to fight corruption in the country whether it is the Congress or the BJP, we cannot continue making these small compromises. Because if we make these small compromises, we compromise everything,” he said.

Prior to Rahul’s open denunciation of the ordinance, Maken tried to defend it citing three points made by Chidambaram. Firstly, an exact formulation of the ordinance was discussed at an all-party meeting on August 13 and the BJP and most other parties agreed to it. Secondly, the parliamentary standing committee was examining the related bill (tabled in the Rajya Sabha) and changes suggested by it or an entirely different bill would be put to vote in Parliament.

“Moreover, BJP has no moral right to indulge in the blame game when Babubhai Vakharia sentenced to three years is still in the Narendra Modi government and Modi shares the dais with (former BJP chief) Bangaru Laxman sentenced to four years.”

Before Rahul Gandhi made his entry, Maken tried to underplay leaders like Digvijay Singh, Sandeep Dikshit and Milind Deora speaking against the ordinance. “Ours is a democratic party. There can be difference of views... The party supports the government decision as the ordinance is perfect so far as law is concerned,” he said while rejecting the suggestion that its urgency was felt to protect ally RJD’s chief Lalu Prasad from imminent conviction in Bihar’s fodder scam.

Sources in the office of Chidambaram, who is assigned powers by the PM to chair any emergency cabinet meeting, said the president has been informally informed that the ordinance submitted to him has been put on hold, pending return of the PM.