The Hindu : When cricket is on, Ayodhya can wait

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Feb 27, 2003

National

National

When cricket is on, Ayodhya can wait

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI FEB. 26. The Ayodhya debate scheduled in the Lok Sabha today was postponed till tomorrow presumably because of the Opposition's love for cricket and desire for adequate publicity.

Immediately after zero hour, several Opposition leaders — Priyaranjan Dasmunshi (Cong.), Mulayam Singh Yadav (Samajwadi Party) and Roop Chand Pal (CPI-M) — approached the Speaker, Manohar Joshi, and requested him for a postponement of the debate which was scheduled to start an hour and a half later.

Mr. Joshi immediately called the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, for consultations in his chamber, and asked her if she had any objections.

And her response, it seems, was absolutely politically correct.

"I told the Speaker that I represent the Government and have no special interest in the debate taking place today, tomorrow or some other day. My concern was to prepare for the alternate agenda, and I told him so,'' Ms. Swaraj told reporters later.

She also pointed out that on Tuesday evening, a similar suggestion from the Opposition leaders had been turned down by the BJP chief whip, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, on the ground that the Business Advisory Committee had already taken a decision when leaders of all the Opposition parties were present.

Today, it seems, when the Opposition leaders approached the Speaker, Mr. Malhotra could not be contacted and hence a decision was taken in his absence, and he was angry. "I will protest to the Speaker," he told reporters later. But why did the Opposition parties want to postpone a discussion on a subject on which they had moved an adjournment motion on the first day after the President's address to the joint session?

In the corridors of Parliament it was said that the legislators wanted to watch cricket — the World Cup match between India and England. And also, they had an afterthought.

On a day when the Railway Budget was presented, they felt newspapers and the electronic media would not give adequate coverage to the Ayodhya debate.

In the Lok Sabha, there were angry exchanges between the BJP and Opposition members when the Speaker announced the postponement.

But he managed to cool down tempers within 10 minutes by pointing out that scheduled debates had been postponed in the past and "leaders of all parties had agreed to the postponement."

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