The Hindu : We too can use Rule 184: BJP

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Apr 25, 2002

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We too can use Rule 184: BJP

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI APRIL 24. The Bharatiya Janata Party seems to have set its heart on paying the compliment of a censure motion back to the Opposition parties.

The party spokesperson, V.K. Malhotra, today warned that motions under Rule 184 would now be moved for happenings in Bihar and West Bengal as a ``precedent has been set'' by the Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker by accepting the Opposition-sponsored motion related to Gujarat. He was referring to the ``precedent'' of discussing a State subject in the Lok Sabha.

Some Trinamool Congress MPs had discussed the matter with him, he said, and they would bring a motion under Rule 184 against the West Bengal Government, and on Bihar such a motion could be jointly moved by the Samata Party and the BJP.

Mr. Malhotra disagreed that the precedent for discussing a State-related subject may have been set much earlier when an adjournment motion in relation to Bihar demanding the dismissal of the then Laloo Prasad Government was moved by Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, then Leader of the Opposition. It was admitted and discussed and before the debate ended converted into a motion under Rule 184.

In July 1997, P.A. Sangma, then in the Speaker's chair, had also on that very day admitted a censure motion under Rule 184 in relation to a police firing on Dalits in Maharashtra. But Mr. Malhotra insisted today that a ``bad precedent'' was set on Tuesday when the Deputy Speaker admitted the censure motion on Gujarat.

The BJP emphasised today that the ``Centre was not directly responsible'' for the Gujarat killings. (The implication was that, therefore, a censure motion ought not to have been admitted.) But, of course, his party had accepted the decision of the presiding officer of the Lok Sabha, Mr. Malhotra added.

He was asked whether the BJP and the Trinamool had arrived at a ``quid pro quo settlement'' in that the BJP would support a Trinamool-sponsored censure motion in return for the Trinamool vote against the Opposition motion on Gujarat to be taken up on April 30. ``No quid pro quo'' was Mr. Malhotra's response.

He said that in Bihar the number of people killed was ``10-fold as compared to Gujarat'' but he did not give the comparative period in which this had taken place. ``In totality, more people have died in Bihar in the last three to four years than in Gujarat,'' he added.

Mr. Malhotra lashed out at the CPI(M) and the Congress saying that were more interested in showing ``cracks'' in the NDA than in helping to restore normality in Gujarat, nor did they have any genuine compassionate feelings for the sufferings of the Gujarat riot victims.

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