The Baalu issue, it now transpires, is not the one over which Speaker Somnath Chatterjee should have initiated the unprecedented House disciplinary procedure to call into question the “disorderly” conduct of members in  parliament’s Lower House. Four days after he referred the disorderly conduct of 32 Opposition members to the House Privileges Committee, the Speaker announced on Monday the withdrawal of his move. The floor leaders who met on Monday did not favour the reference.

This, however, does not mean that there isn’t an imperative need for considering some exemplary and harsh initiative to discipline regularly erring members whose numbers have grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. The problem with this aborted initiative was not really that the members concerned were all from the Opposition benches. It is more about the issue that was the cause of the Opposition agitation – union shipping, road transport and highways minister T R Baalu’s morally untenable bid to influence the high and mighty in the government to do a favour to companies headed by his two sons. Baalu has been rather desperately approaching Murli Deora, the petroleum and natural gas minister, to allocate natural gas to Kings Chemical and King High Power companies owned by his sons. Somehow the GAIL chief has been resisting the pressure  even though the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) wrote as many as eight letters to the concerned authorities by way of forwarding Baalu’s request.

Baalu’s defence that the two companies hadn’t availed even a single cubic metre of gas is hardly convincing. Should Baalu have used his position in the government to push for the favour and in the process involved even the PMO? That being the issue, the Opposition used parliament to launch a political campaign over the issue. Mmore than attacking Baalu, the Opposition targeted the Prime Minister by questioning the rationale of his office writing eight letters on the Baalu request. That should have been avoided; it is not good that the Prime Minister’s authority is eroded by a PSU official though in this case it would appear that the official in question could do so because the PMO was taking up a weak and indefensible case.