Opposition, government spat over Lok Sabha agenda

There was a heated exchange of words between the opposition and the ruling benches in the Lok Sabha on Thursday over the government's agenda for the next week.

As soon as Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Rajiv Pratap Rudy read out the government's scheduled agenda for next week, Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia protested that some of the bills listed, including the land acquisition bill, were not discussed in the meeting of the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) held on Wednesday.

The BAC is a panel comprising MPs which discusses the matters to be taken up and the time allocated for each item in each house.

While Rudy agreed to this, he said that the report of the Business Advisory Committee has already been submitted in the house and the list of bills he read out was what the government proposed to do in the next week.

Member after member, including Biju Janata Dal's Tathagat Sathpathy, Trinamool Congress' Saugata Roy and CPI-M's Mahammed Salim protested the move and said that the government was trying to bulldoze its view.

As the members sparred, Congress president Sonia Gandhi could be seen actively speaking to the opposition MPs.

Questioning as to why the bills were not discussed in the BAC meeting, Scindia said: "This is a new tradition being brought in. If this continues, then the BAC should be done away with".

"In fact, when we enquired about the land acquisition bill, we were told nothing is scheduled as of now," he said.

Satpathy said: "When there is a BAC, whatever has been discussed there is sacrosanct. Adding things which were not discussed is wrong".

Saugata Roy said: "This hush-hush method is not right. Parliament is an open forum".

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley claimed that it was a long-standing tradition to have two separate items on what was discussed in the BAC and what the government proposes to take up.

Speaker Sumitra Mahajan assured the opposition members that a separate BAC meeting can be called early next week to discuss the new items included.