Parliament may be adjourned on Wednesday: CPI(M)

New Delhi, Sep 6: Indicating that Parliament may be adjourned sine die on Wednesday, a day ahead of schedule, CPI(M) today (Sep 6) accused BJP of "helping" the ruling Congress by disrupting proceedings and letting the government off the hook on major issues affecting the people.

"Due to disruptions, major issues could not be properly debated and the government got some bills passed without discussion. This is not only undemocratic, but anti- democratic ... Not having a discussion suits both of them," CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury told reporters here.

Maintaining that there were "strong indications" of both Houses being adjourned on Wednesday and not the day after as scheduled, he said "this sort of disruptions is only helping the government go scot-free, without any accountability".

Yechury's party colleague Basudeb Acharia said "if the people's issues are not discussed in the House, then what is the purpose of Parliament? Both Congress and BJP don''t want it to function. The BJP is helping the Congress to see that there is no debate on important issues".

During this session, "we wanted an adjournment motion on price rise to be discussed under rules that entail voting.

It was meant to put pressure on the government to inform the House what steps it had taken to contain rising prices. But suddenly we see a joint draft coming out and discussion held under rules under which there is no voting, he said.

Both the Houses had earlier adopted unanimous resolutions asking the government to take effective steps to contain prices and "we wanted to know what steps were taken as food inflation has now risen above 10 per cent", Yechury said.

Besides price rise, Acharia listed out a series of issues which were "part of the agenda but not discussed".

These included debates on FDI in retail sector, corruption, terrorism and the 13/7 Mumbai blasts, flood situation in various parts of the country, acute shortage of fertiliser and consequent problems faced by farmers.

On the issue of corruption and the recent arrests of Reddy brothers, Yechury said the Left has been in the forefront of the struggle against illegal mining in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka for the past 6-7 years.

"We took up the matter with the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh. Then the matter also went to the court and our stand that illegal mining was happening was proved correct", he said.

The role played by the Reddy brothers to bring BJP to power first time in South India (Karnataka) is significant, Yechury said, demanding that the government should take steps to "recover thousands of crores looted" by the mining mafia and use them for public good.

PTI