UPA gets Maya boost in RS

BSP agrees to support govt on retail FDI in upper House vote will abstain, says SP

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was on Thursday assured of being home and dry in the Rajya Sabha debate on foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail, with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) shedding its tentativeness and announcing it was with the government on the issue.

Barely 24 hours after both BSP and the Samajwadi Party (SP) staged a walkout from the Lok Sabha yesterday, UPA has got a shot in the arm, as the former has pledged its support and the latter announced its nine MPs would abstain from voting in the Rajya Sabha, too. This could have made the result of tomorrow’s voting irrelevant because the government now seems to have more numbers than required to win the vote.

The smiles on the faces of Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath, his junior colleague Rajeev Shukla and others on the treasury benches said it all as they thumped the table in cheer when BSP leader Mayawati ended her speech with the announcement that her party would oppose the motion against retail FDI because “it does not want to be seen as siding with communal forces”.

Mayawati minced no words about her doubts on retail FDI, but conceded all governments needed capital. How UPA managed to get her on its side is a story yet to be revealed, but it seems likely BSP would back the government in future, too. Her support could come in handy to clear the raft of financial Bills due to come up in the next few days.

Yesterday’s sneering remarks of Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj on BSP and SP being bought over by intimidation of CBI could have backfired, as Mayawati launched a diatribe on how the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had misused CBI for its own interests.

The enormous gains the Opposition had made with Arun Jaitley, its leader in the Rajya Sabha, tearing into UPA and its “debate based on deception and concocted figures” looked squandered in the chaos that followed Mayawati’s attack on Swaraj.

Accusing UPA of heading a “minority government”, both Jaitley and AIADMK’s V Maitreyan cited the 272 “magic number” that had repeatedly eluded UPA in the Lok Sabha. “You have fallen 18 short of a majority in the Lok Sabha; after this figure, you are a lame-duck government,” said Jaitley.