Here in spirit, and not beyond

Poor attendance of members marred two symbolically key items in Parliament today, the first anniversary of last year’s terrorist attacks on Mumbai.

A blood donation camp organised by Speaker Meira Kumar to mark the tragedy hardly found any donors among the MPs. And, in the afternoon, as the Lok Sabha discussed the issue of price rise, she had to twice raise the alarm to make a quorum. Even then, most of the benches remained empty.

Kumar had planned the blood donation camp in the Parliament House Annexe today to send a message of solidarity on the first anniversary of the attack, that claimed 164 lives. Although she reached there almost 10 minutes before the scheduled time to inaugurate the camp, at the end of the day, just 17 out of 779 MPs came to donate blood. And, said a senior officer in the Lok Sabha secretariat to Business Standard, “out of the 17 willing members, only nine were found fit for donating blood.”

Although the opposition parties, the BJP had especially slammed the first UPA government on its failure to prevent the terror attacks in Mumbai. But, not one of its members today stepped inside the blood donation camp. Most of those who did dome to give blood were from the Congress. Among the ministers, only one, V Narayanasamy (minister of state for parliamentary affairs) was present.

The Parliament staff, however, responded positively and 42 of them attended the camp today.

As for the price rise debate, opposition parties had dubbed the issue the “biggest problem” for voters and many demonstrations have already taken place on the streets against the Centre’s effectiveness on the issue. But, when the discussion began today in the Lok Sabha, most of the seats were vacant and many MPs had already left for their constituencies, as there is no Parliament on Friday. The Left benches were almost empty, barring three Mps. The BJP bench, too, didn’t have members. Among the UPA allies, the Trinamool Congress was able to muster most of their MPs, although its leader, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee, was busy in holding meetings with senior Congress ministers on violence in West Bengal.

In the evening, when foodr and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar began his reply, the attendance had improved, but most of the seats were still vacant.