New Delhi, Dec 30 (IANS) Marxist leader Sitaram Yechury Friday accused the government of having a pre-conceived plan to create chaos in the Rajya Sabha during the Lokpal bill debate and blamed the Trinamool Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal of playing along.
Yechury said the Trinamool and the RJD played along with the government strategy to disrupt the house during the Thursday night debate.
He said: ‘The Trinamool Congress’ sudden aggressiveness in objecting to this federalism issue was very strange because two days earlier in the Lok Sabha they had done nothing about this. A few days earlier in the union cabinet when the bill was cleared and was to be placed before the parliament, they had not raised any of these objections.’
‘The government is now coming up with a frenzy of excuses that there were too many amendments.The right to give amendments is a fundamental right in the parliamentary democracy,’ he added.
Yechury said that once the discussion started in the Rajya Sabha, it was clear from the way it was proceeding that the government had already planned not to complete the discussion.
‘The whole game plan was to make sure that the government does not accept some of the important amendments which were aimed to strengthen the Lokpal.’
Holding the government responsible for not taking a vote on the Lokpal bill in the Rajya Sabha, Yechury said: ‘We hold the government squarely responsible for this. They should have had the decency and the courage to openly state their position, or what they wanted, and why they are against the amendments.’
The Lokpal bill, after its passage in the Lok Sabha Tuesday, was debated upon in the Rajya Sabha Thursday, but there was no voting. The house was adjourned sine die after more than 11 hours of debate.
