BJP lets House work, pass crucial bills

After disruption on the previous day and Wednesday morning over missing coal files and the Prime Minister’s statement to which MPs couldn’t ask questions, the BJP allowed Parliament to function on Wednesday for the passage of the crucial Pension Bill in the Lok Sabha and Land Acquisition Bill in the Rajya Sabha.

After disruption on the previous day and Wednesday morning over missing coal files and the Prime Minister’s statement to which MPs couldn’t ask questions, the BJP allowed Parliament to function on Wednesday for the passage of the crucial Pension Bill in the Lok Sabha and Land Acquisition Bill in the Rajya Sabha.

The agreement was hammered out when Union ministers P Chidambaram and Kamal Nath met BJP leaders LK Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley on Wednesday afternoon. The previous night, the Prime Minister’s meeting with the BJP leaders before his departure had failed to resolve the deadlock.

The ministers requested the BJP to allow Parliament to function to pass key legislations like the pension Bill and land Bill. The BJP said it would allow the bills to be passed provided the government allowed it to speak on the missing coal files first.

Sushma Swaraj is learnt to have shot down the government’s proposal to extend the session by another week.

When the government agreed to the Opposition’s request, Parliament functioned again to take up the Bills in the afternoon.

“We don’t want the government to blame us for its policy paralysis. So we have insisted that government’s accountability to Parliament should be balanced with the need to pass laws. We got the government to agree to this,” a BJP leader said.