By Sushil Kutty
The INDI-Alliance is fighting to stay united in Parliament, at least, matching wits with not just the treasury benches and the NDA government but also with the presiding officers of the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha, the Constitution held high, which is making everybody in the NDA nervous. In the Lok Sabha, the Speaker Om Birla is the bigger adversary of the INDI-Alliance than the NDA Government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
So, Samajwadi Party and Congress stick together and the 3-member AAP MP team also answers to the INDI-Alliance call for unity. But the same AAP and Congress are bent on pulling each other down in Delhi where heavy rains and water-logging has led to a running battle between the two. It’s as if water entered both the ears of both the parties. The AAP the other day mocked the Congress with the disparaging ‘Couldn’t open account in past two elections’, the derision cutting deep.
The rivalry often breaks out in the open. A couple of days ago, after heavy rains, the Congress charged the AAP government with deserting Delhi to the elements. Stung to the quick, Delhi health minister Saurabh Bhardwaj attacked Delhi Congress chief Devender Yadav. But AAP also advocated unity among opposition parties, aware that jailed Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal needed allies rather than enemies.
Notably, Bharadwaj spoke of carrying on with the fight “for the Constitution”. The Opposition has been holding up the Constitution to corner the government on a host of issues including the Modi government’s handling of NEET/NET that ruined the budding careers of lakhs of students. The need for opposition unity has never been more important than at the present time.
The Janata Dal-U and the Telugu Desam Party have to be shamed into deserting the BJP; coerced to quit the NDA , else face criticism and possible electoral reverses. This mission requires unity. The Congress and the AAP must bury the hatchet if the INDI-Alliance wants to steamroll the NDA when it is at its most vulnerable.
But the BJP-led NDA government must not be allowed the luxury to settle down. The opposition parties’ “fight for the Constitution” is producing results and the fight for the Constitution should continue in both houses of Parliament, even if the constituents of the INDI-Alliance keep contesting each other outside Parliament.
“Opposition parties in the nation are fighting to save the constitution…Division among the opposition parties is not good. The local leadership in different states have the right to express their views,” AAP’s Bhardwaj said.
Waterlogged Delhi did wreak havoc. Three labourers died in a wall collapse. And, as if it was the fault of the Congress, AAP said that the Congress couldn’t open its “account in the past two Delhi assembly elections”, adding, “Devender Yadav is himself losing elections but on the national level, we all are a part of alliance and we don’t want to engage in unnecessary arguments at the local level.”
INC Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram Shashi Tharoor tweeted a video: “This is the corner just outside my home in Lutyens’ Delhi. Woke up to find my entire home under a foot of water — every room. Carpets and furniture, indeed anything on the ground, ruined. Apparently the storm water drains in the neighbourhood are all clogged so the water had no place to go. And they switched off the electricity since 6 am for fear of electrocuting people. Warned my Parliament colleagues that I might not make it there without a boat. But the city managed to pump water out of the roads and I did arrive in time!”
Good for Tharoor and good for Parliament.
So, who controls the city and who saved Tharoor’s day? Cannot be Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. Jail is not the place for altruism. Kejriwal continues to be Chief Minister as he rules Delhi from within the walls of the Tihar and the State PWD and MCD are run by Minister Atishi Marlena who was yet to recover from the ill-effects of her indefinite fast for water.
Marlena did not bargain for the deluge. Lutyen’s Delhi is the NDMC’s bailiwick and Tharoor should make a ruckus in the Lok Sabha. Tharoor’s prized collection of books was saved but he should take the sledgehammer to whichever municipal body’s job it was to prevent water-logging in Lutyen’s Delhi. Anything to hold up the Constitution and corner the NDA government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The NDMC area is home to India’s power elite, the crème de la crème. Rashtrapati Bhavan stands on a hill, else President Droupadi Murmu would have been complaining of ‘waterlogging’. Everyone with an axe to grind is complaining and the complaining shouldn’t stop so long as it makes the Centre nervous. The government shouldn’t get the respite it seeks to get the chance to escape accountability, and possible dethroning. (IPA Service)
