Lessons in parliamentary affairs

BACKSTAGE

When Sushma Swaraj took over as parliamentary affairs minister a year ago in addition to being minister of health, opposition leaders sang uncharacteristic paeans of praise to her.

They considered her a cultured, civilised and considerate minister, they said, who would bring the spirit of bipartisanship back in Parliament, especially on crucial issues.

Swaraj was also one of the ministers to have won high praise from Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee during his address to MPs in the just-concluded session of the BJP Parliamentary Party. Vajpayee said Swaraj's handling of Parliament was impeccable and efficient.

Actually, if you consider Swaraj's track record, it is her performance as health minister rather than Parliamentary affairs that should have got the pat of approval.

Parliamentary Affairs may appear to be a part-time job, given that Parliament is off for a large part of the year. But few realise how challenging the work of herding together indisciplined and self-willed MPs is.

To be a good minister you have to be part-lawyer, part- diplomat and part-bureaucrat and must have unparallelled public relations skills. It is a thankless job because even if you steer the House to a successful conclusion through choppy waters, you get no kudos "" you're considered to have merely done your job. In a 20-party coalition, coordinating schedules can be hard. Swaraj found this to her cost more than once.

The IDBI (repeal) Bill, which would have ensured the corporatisation of the IDBI, came up in the first part of the winter session of the Lok Sabha. When the debate was over and it was time to vote, the lobbies were cleared for voting as is customary.

The opposition came into the House early and found Treasury benches MPs missing in strength. Quick thinking by opposition managers forced a division on the issue of securing a government guarantee that the Centre's stake in Industrial Development Bank of India would not go below 51 per cent post-corporatisation, something that is an article of faith with both the Congress and the Left.

If the division had been pressed, the government would have been in the embarrassing position of having lost the motion. So Finance Minister Jaswant Singh had to give an assurance conceding the opposition demand on the floor of the House to ensure that the Opposition would not defeat the Bill. The parliamentary affairs minister "" and the BJP's chief whip "" could have avoided that contingency.

Again, only the most credulous believed Swaraj's theory that the government had not prorogued the Lok Sabha before dissolution because it did not want to bring the office of the president into politics.

The sum of Swaraj's argument was: we had decided to have an early election, and if the President had made the customary address to the two Houses of Parliament, he would have had to refer to our decision to have early elections.

Then the opposition would have told the government that they got the President to declare elections. That is why the decision to prorogue the House was postponed.

The fact is that the law is not clear on whether the President addresses the first session of the year or the first session of a new session in a calendar year. The CPI (M) is going to court on the issue. A parliamentary affairs minister who is a practising lawyer could have averted this.

But then, the dissolution of the Lok Sabha, for a minister for parliamentary affairs, is like marrying off a daughter. Mostly they are known to heave a sigh of relief.

On the other hand, Swaraj's handling of the Sars epidemic, and coordinated publicity on the bird flu issue - which is more dangerous because of the panic it can cause rather than the actual epidemic "" deserves praise.

But to handle the parliamentary affairs department as well, her day would have had to be 48 hours long with only brickbats at the end of the day. It is hard to be a parliamentary affairs minister.