NEW DELHI, 27 August 2004 — Indian Parliament passed the national budget in a half-empty house yesterday after the opposition failed to show up, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed anguish and anger over the political impasse. The opposition accused the country’s premier of insulting them after they refused to debate the spending bill.
“This is not the way a great democracy ought to function,” Manmohan said after the 4.8 trillion rupee ($104 billion) budget was passed in the lower house, the Lok Sabha, without debate.
After weeks of disrupting Parliament and refusing to debate the national budget, the opposition National Democratic Alliance boycotted the vote and accused Manmohan of insulting them when he refused to discuss the budget at a private meeting on Wednesday.
“We as a government recognize the opposition has a vital role to play,” Manmohan said in Parliament. “But ... I feel sad at the end of the day. We have to reflect on the consequences of what has been happening in Parliament in recent weeks.”
He said he hoped the opposition would return and participate when Parliament reopens in the winter.
The opposition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) refused to vote, saying Manmohan had snubbed its leaders when he would not listen to their budget proposals at a private meeting Wednesday.
The opposition which paralyzed Parliament for weeks and refused to take part in any discussion of the budget demanded a “public apology” from the 71-year-old premier for the alleged insult.
Former Defense Minister George Fernandes, who went to call on Manmohan, said the prime minister’s behavior had been “regrettably uncivilized, impolite and discourteous” and “we were out of his room in two-and-a-half minutes”. NDA leaders met in the morning and decided to boycott the Parliament to protest Manmohan’s “behavior.”
Fernandes accused Manmohan of throwing the opposition’s proposals down on a table.
But a spokesman for the premier rejected the opposition’s allegations.
“Manmohan Singh cannot be discourteous to a fly. To say he was rude or that he flung down the note is difficult to accept,” a spokesman for the prime minister told reporters.
The PM’s office said Manmohan had only asked why opposition leaders were visiting him to present their views on the budget after they refused to participate in a parliamentary debate on the subject. The premier later Wednesday telephoned opposition leaders to say he had meant no disrespect, only that he wanted them to take part in parliamentary debates, a spokesman said.
Government ministers rallied to Manmohan’s defense. “What else could he have said when the BJP has been disrupting the house since day one? Should he have kept the memorandum on his head or in the waste-paper basket?” asked Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
The deadlock in the legislature and the lack of debate on national spending has been criticized by the Indian media and politicians from both sides as a mockery of democratic procedure in the world’s largest democracy.
Parliament bills that involve spending millions in taxpayers’ money have been passed without any public debate this month because the NDA has refused to take part in discussions on them.
The opposition has been demanding that Manmohan fire ministers in his Cabinet charged in criminal cases, force a state government to withdraw criminal charges against a senior opposition member, and replace a plaque dedicated to a BJP hero that was removed when Manmohan’s party came to power. Almost every day, opposition lawmakers have risen from their chairs in dozens, raising fists, chanting slogans and shouting down the speaker and government leaders.
The Congress party did the same when it was in opposition during the tenure of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of the BJP, who was succeeded by Manmohan in May. However, the Congress debated Vajpayee’s budget.
No Tax on NRI Deposits
The government has decided to postpone a tax on deposits from Indian expatriates to April 1, 2005, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said yesterday.
