India\'s Paralyzed Parliament

By HARI KUMAR

These days, the Indian legislators have settled into a routine: At 11 a.m., members of the upper and lower houses gather at the Parliament House. Immediately, the opposition members walk to the well of the house, shouting, “Nahi chalegi, nahi chalegi” (“will not function, will not function”) and “Manmohan Singh gaddi choro!” (“Manmohan Singh, leave the chair”). The helpless speaker repeatedly tells the members, “Kripya baith jaieye” (“Please sit down”), but no one listens. After few minutes, the session is adjourned.

The country's lawmakers have never been considered industrious, but this week the Parliament was paralyzed as the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, accusing him of corruption after an audit showed that the government lost 1.85 trillion rupees ($34 billion) in royalties over its sales of coal concessions. Power executives said that most of the losses were largely theoretical because companies have mined coal from just 28 of the 142 leases.

The government has been accused of losing money in a similar fashion, when another review two years ago estimated that it left as much as 1.8 trillion rupees on the table by not auctioning wireless phone licenses in 2008. The audit led to the arrests of government officials and corporate executives and the resignation of the telecommunications minister at the time of the sale.

On Friday, the government avoided additional scrutiny over the wireless spectrum scandal after the Supreme Court dismissed two petitions against P. Chidambaram that had called for an investigation of the finance minister.

The Congress Party, which leads the ruling coalition, has said that the coal audit can be discussed in Parliament and that the prime minister was ready to answer all questions.

“Congress's appeal for a debate is a sham as th ey have never respected commitments made in parliamentary debates,” said Prakash Javadekar, a B.J.P. spokesman, at a news conference on Thursday.

The ruling coalition fired back with its own press conference on Friday. “We are disappointed that opposition, mainly B.J.P., is not willing to discuss the matter on the floor of the house,” said Mr. Chidambaram.

He also dismissed the audit's findings, saying, “If the coal is not mined, where is the loss?”

The opposition defended its refusal to work. “We are entitled to parliamentary obstructionism as part of our parliamentary tactic,” Arun Jaitley, a B.J.P. leader in the upper house of Parliament, told Times Now, an independent news channel, on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, legislative bills are piling up, waiting for action. During the monsoon session, which began Aug. 8 and ends Sept. 7, Parliament was supposed to pass several bills related to food security, higher education, combating corruption an d land acquisitions, among other pressing topics. But so far the Lok Sabha, the lower house, has yet to pass a single bill, even though 24 were introduced on Aug. 9.

In total, the lower house is sitting on 57 bills this year, according to the Lok Sabha's Web site.

An editorial in The Indian Express, an independent daily, lamented, “In an already-short session, everyone, including the opposition, loses if valuable time is spent on political grandstanding.”