When opposing bills, Trinamool looks Left

Left parties and Trinamool Congress — opposing parties in West Bengal — took up cudgels against the UPA government’s banking law amendment bill in Lok Sabha and helped each other to force adjournments, twice.

Updated on: Dec 19, 2012, 02:12:20 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Rivals from a state rarely join hands in Indian politics.

The rarity happened when Left parties and Trinamool Congress — opposing parties in West Bengal — took up cudgels against the UPA government’s banking law amendment bill in Lok Sabha and helped each other to force adjournments, twice.

But Tuesday’s bonhomie — last seen when the two opposed FDI in multi-brand retail — was unexpected.

When Sugata Roy of Trinamool Congress raised a point of order after finance minister P Chidambaram introduced the bill, Left MPs stood up in his support.

Trinamool MPs reciprocated by rushing into the well, where Left members were gathered seeking withdrawal of the bill and eventually their joint sloganeering led to an adjournment.

In between the two adjournments they forced, the MPs from the two parties could be seen strategising together on how to force the government to accept their demands, especially on withdrawing provision to allow banks to invest in forward contracts.

They came together again when parliamentary affairs minister Kamal Nath approached a Left leader and the entire group agreed with the solution offered by CPI's Gurudas Dasgupta.

Roy described Dasgupta as guru of the banking sector and even quoted him. Khagen Das of CPM referred to Roy several times in his intervention and even the speech content from the two parties was similar.

Dasgupta saw "nothing wrong" in this unusual convergence saying they have come together to oppose a farce being perpetuated by the government in the name of economic reforms.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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