Chidambaram under fire, old friend Pranab Mukherjee comes to rescue

The Congress is desperate to have a smooth winter session. With 31 bills pending clearance in 21 days, the government wants to ensure that not even a single day is wasted.

Though the first day, Tuesday, started with an adjournment, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, a veteran crisis manager, has already started work on pacifying opposition leaders.

Anticipating trouble, Mukherjee, in fact, started work last week by inviting BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley to his home. He even lunched with BJP president Nitin Gadkari at his home on Monday.

Ever since former telecom minister A Raja dropped home minister P Chidambaram's name in the 2G scam,
the BJP has been demanding an investigation into his role during the spectrum allocation.

The Congress, especially Mukherjee, was in a spot of bother recently when a finance ministry note hinting that Chidambaram was in the know when Raja had allocated the spectrum got leaked in the media. Things came to such a pass that the prime minister had to intervene to get the two heavyweights back to talking terms. And now when the BJP has put Chidambaram in the dock, Mukherjee is the fire-fighter.

By noon on Tuesday, the Congress and the finance minister realised that more work was needed if Parliament were to function in the coming days. Earlier in the day, all BJP members rose in unison during the Question Hour shouting slogans when home minister P Chidambaram tried to answer RJD's Raghuvansh Prasad Singh (it was the day's first question).

Demanding that Chidambaram should resign as former telecom minister A Raja has accused him of knowing details of the 2G spectrum allocation, they kept shouting till speaker Meira Kumar adjourned the house. The BJP and other NDA allies had decided on Monday to boycott Chidambaram at any cost.

"As far as the boycott is concerned, I sincerely hope that political parties will desist from any such temptation," prime minister Manmohan Singh told reporters outside Parliament.

But demand for Chidambaram's resignation was not the only issue that rocked the Lok Sabha. Opposition MPs questioned the proposed division of Uttar Pradesh and the demand for a separate state, Telangana. The Left parties came down heavily on the government for failing to contain inflation.

Mukherjee and parliamentary affairs minister Pawan Bansal met CPI(M) MPs Sitaram Yechury, Basudeb Acharia and Gurudas Dasgupta over lunch requesting them not to disrupt parliamentary proceedings.

A Left source told DNA that the MPs agreed to a discussion on the price rise on Wednesday under a rule that does not entail voting.

They told Mukherjee that they "would not disrupt Parliament" but they needed to stand up for the common man.

"We will see how it goes in the morning and then decide on the next course of action," a CPI(M) MP said. Bansal told reporters that Acharia's notice on price rise would be taken up for discussion on Wednesday.

The BJP, which has announced that it will support the Left over price rise, is expected to table an adjournment motion regarding black money. The Left parties, along with the RJD and the RLD, have, however, made it clear that they are not in favour of targeting individuals.

A Gadkari aide told DNA that the BJP was willing to cooperate with the government on all matters concerning national interest. "But it is also concerned over several important issues… these have to be aggressively voiced in Parliament," he said.

Besides getting 31 bills cleared, this session is important for the Congress because they also have to prove social activist Anna Hazare's argument on Parliament's "ineffectiveness" wrong. And much depends on Mukherjee; but only time will tell if his efforts have been successful.