Sibal hopes education Bill will be passed in winter session

HRD Minister Kapil Sibal may be cut up with his party colleague Keshav Rao for the stalling of a key education Bill in the Rajya Sabha yesterday but Parliamentary Affairs Minister P K Bansal and the party refused to hold the MP or floor management responsible for it.

A day after Education Tribunal Bill was deferred because of opposition from MPs from Congress and other parties, Sibal today said he would not blame anybody for failure to secure its passage but hoped it would be passed in the Winter session.

Sibal had met Prime Minister yesterday and reportedly complained against Rao and also floor management.

Bansal saw nothing wrong in either the speech of Rao who spoke against the bill or the government's strategy to defer the bill at the last moment seeing the mood in the Upper House.

He insisted that the floor strategy of the government needed to be decided taking the sense of the House. "You cannot be foolhardy and dash against the wall," Bansal said, adding the effort should always be to take everybody along.

Echoing similar views, AICC General Secretary Janardan Dwivedi too defended Rao saying "Congress was a democratic party and considers everyone's opinion".

Sibal had faced an embarrassing situation in the Rajya Sabha yesterday when Rao, joined by members from other parties, attacked him for his "hurry" to get the nod of the House for the Bill which has already adopted by the Lok Sabha.

Rao had lambasted the Minister calling him a "first-class file pusher" whose "thoughts run faster that his deeds".

In view of the opposition, the minister had not pressed for the Bill's passage.

"I am willing to take every responsibility for whatever happened. I think it is very ungracious for me to blame anybody," he told reporters on the sidelines of a function here.

Asked whether he raised with the Prime Minister the issue of poor floor management in the House, Sibal said "I informed him what happened in the House as a minister. Nothing more than that."

He said before taking up the Bill which provides for setting up of a tribunal to decide on conflicts in the education sector, he had consulted Opposition members both in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.

"The House wanted more debate on the issue and we agreed. We will debate further in the Winter session. It will be passed in the Rajya Sabha," he said.

When asked about the stiff opposition to the Bill including from Congress members, he said that as a Minister, he respected the mood of the House.

Sibal said he has no plans to meet Congress President Sonia Gandhi to discuss the issue.