Govt unlikely to table Lokpal Bill before April
The BJP may have demanded reconvening of the Parliament session to hold a vote on the Lokpal Bill, but the Congress-led UPA government is in no mood to oblige the Opposition, at least not till mid-April.
Top government sources told Deccan Herald on Friday that it is unlikely that the contentious Bill will be taken up again in the first half of the budget session.
The session, which is likely to begin in the first week of March, may go on till around March 20 after which it will take a break. This is mainly to enable the members to take part in the Parliamentary standing committee meetings which will discuss various budget allocations.
The second part of the budget session may start around April 15 and go on till about May 15. It is likely that the Lokpal Bill would be taken up during this half of the session.
Said a senior minister: “We may not take up the Lokpal Bill in the first half of the session because we will have many other important bills to pass. Because of the disruptions during the winter session, these bills could not be passed and they would be the first to be taken up. This may take considerable time of the two Houses.”
The winter session was extended by three working days specially to pass the anti-graft Bill last month. However, while the Bill secured the seal of approval of Lok Sabha, the same could not be repeated in Rajya Sabha, where the UPA is in a minority.
Soon after the RS Lokpal fiasco, senior ministers at the Centre including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have asserted that the Lokpal Bill would indeed be taken up during the Budget Session, but they were unclear as to the precise time of its introduction. The duration of the session lasts for two months.
To add to government's problems, ally Trinamool Congress opposed some of the provisions in the Bill. The House had to be adjourned under controversial circumstances at 12 midnight on December 29.
The BJP has therefore sought to reconvene the session.
Parliament will again have to go through the lengthy and tumultuous process it witnessed during the winter session for even if the RS accepts one amendment, the Bill will have to again go to LS for its approval. LS, at this stage, may either accept or reject the amendment.
The rejection would present the government with the option of having a joint session of the Parliament to pass the Bill. According to Article 108, a joint session can be called if after a Bill has been passed by one House and transmitted to the other House (a) the Bill is rejected by the other House; or the Houses have finally disagreed as to the amendments to be made to the Bill; or (c) more than six months elapse from the date of the reception of the Bill by the other House without the Bill being passed by it.
The government had convened a joint session to pass a Bill in 2002 when the Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act in 2002 was brought before it by the A B Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance government. The Congress-led UPA repealed it after coming to power in 2004.
