Parliament Deadlocked

With the first hint that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity might be slipping, the Opposition has suddenly rediscovered its confidence. Unfortunately, this seems to express itself most vociferously in parliamentary disruptions. Are we really going to see the Congress Party, as also other sections of the Opposition, do to the incumbent National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government what the NDA did to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government between 2009 and 2014? Some of the comments from Congress leaders almost suggest that it is payback time for the NDA.

The NDA has handed the Opposition corruption issues on a platter. The Minister of External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj, has been shown to have, prima facie, abused her powers to help an absconder from Indian law and then tried to hide her conflict of interest in dealing with him. Another Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and presently Rajasthan Chief Minister, Vasundhara Raje, was shown to have secretly signed documents in the United Kingdom to help Lalit Modi get these papers, and her son was shown to have received monies from him. The other corruption scandal is the Vyapam recruitment scam in Madhya Pradesh where allegations have been made that selections to government medical and engineering courses, and jobs were being rigged and that senior members of the BJP government as well as family members of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan were involved.