Ordinances a result of special circumstances: Khurshid

Even as parliament is the proper forum to enact laws, the Congress-led coalition government was proposing ordinances as a special case due to constant disruptions of house proceedings, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said Tuesday.

"What does one do when three continuous sessions have been continuously disrupted," Khurshid queried n reply to a question over the propriety of passing ordinances just after the conclusion of a parliament session, as also when general elections were due soon.

The foreign minister, who was part of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's delegation to Myanmar for the third BIMSTEC Summit, told journalists on the way back that he certainly believed under normal circumstances, ordinances were not a proper route.

But he defended the proposal from party vice president Rahul Gandhi to push some key legislation on a host of issues by way of ordinances. The issues include anti-graft measures and reservations for some communities.

But the government so far has desisted due to reservations expressed by President Pranab Mukherjee's office.

(Arvind Padmanabhan can be reached at arvind.p@ians.in)