Best speakers from BJP opt out of budget debate

The BJP’s joy at having some of its best speakers in the Lok Sabha proved to be shortlived, with former finance ministers Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh absenting themselves from the debate on the Union budget.

The party’s deputy leader in the Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, confirmed that Sinha was asked to lead the debate on the finance bill and not the budget. “He has declined to speak on budget and finance bills,” said Swaraj. Instead former HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi led the party in the debate on Thursday. Jaswant Singh who has not made an appearance in Parliament this session will be returning to Delhi on Saturday. Swaraj said that the party will ask him to lead the debate on the finance bill.

In the Rajya Sabha, instead of former disinvestment minister Arun Shourie leading the debate, either SS Ahluwalia or M Venkaiah Naidu will be asked todo the job.

Sinha, Singh and Shourie had not just held important portfolios like finance and disinvestment but had been the party’s voice on these issues in its previous stint in the opposition. Their exclusion from the list of speakers just goes to show how badly things are going for the party. Even for the railway budget, senior MP Sumitra Mahajan (she led the speech last year) was miffed at not being given an early slot to speak. Instead, Advani loyalist Ananth Kumar got the plum top slot.

“Since these people were absent at the meeting to decide the speakers, there’s a feeling the chasm between them and the Advani faction has become deep,” said a BJP leader.  On Thursday, Rajnath Singh spoke to Yashwant Sinha and though the latter was apparently mollified, he stuck to his stand about not speaking in the debate.