New Delhi: The stalemate in Parliament
that completely paralysed business during last week ended
today with the government and the opposition agreeing to
discuss "inflation", an euphemism for price rise, on a motion
without any voting.
The government appeared to have had its way on the issue
at a breakfast meeting convened by Leader of the House in the
Lok Sabha Pranab Mukherjee had with leaders of political
parties where the opposition gave up its demand for discussion
under a rule, which entails voting and was the point of
friction the whole of last week.
The two Houses, which had remained paralysed since
the session began last Monday, were back to normal today
transacting all the listed business.
Now both sides have agreed to pass a resolution in
both the Houses, which would express concern on the situation
caused by inflation after discussing the "adverse impact of
inflationary pressure on the common man".
The government did not concede the opposition demand of
including "price rise" in the resolution, arguing that the
issue was a continuing phenomenon which could not be stopped
and instead favoured the use of the term "inflationary
pressure"
Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj said that the
opposition succeeded in getting the word "common man" in the
resolution to which the government was objecting.
"They were not using the word `common man`, so we
objected. Now the words `adverse impact of inflationary
pressure on the common man` have been included in the
resolution," she said.
"This is a recognition of the protests launched by the
opposition parties," CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta said.
Normalcy returned to both the Houses in the morning
when they sat down to transacting business for the first time
in the monsoon session by taking up the Question Hour.
"I am happy to inform that there is an agreement
between the ruling and the opposition benches on having a
discussion on the adverse impact of inflation on the common
man tomorrow and there will be no disruption in the
proceedings of the House today," Speaker Meira Kumar said in
the Lok Sabha.
In the Rajya Sabha, Chairman Hamid Ansari observed,"I
have good news today. We will have the Question Hour." In the
Rajya Sabha the discussion will take place on Wednesday.
During the hour-long meeting with Mukherjee, the
opposition had pressed hard for changing the wordings of the
resolution, whose draft had said "this House expresses concern
at inflationary pressures on the economy and calls upon the
government to contain its impact".
The issue of price rise had rocked Parliament during
almost the entire first week of the Monsoon Session with an
angry opposition seeking to censure the government in both the
Houses.
The deadlock had remained unresolved even after the
Lok Sabha Speaker rejected notices of adjournment motion on
the issue.
The opposition has been blaming the government for
failure to control rise in prices, particularly of food items
and petroleum products. The general inflation has remained in
the double digit while prices of food items were increasing by
9.6 per cent.
PTI
