Thaindian News

New Delhi, Dec 30 (IANS) Accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of playing politics, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal Friday said the party’s amendments to the Lokpal bill were meant to ensure that it is not passed.

Bansal said he was pained to hear Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley say that Thursday’s debate was choreographed by the government with the idea of avoiding a vote on the bill.

“I in fact level this charge on them. The BJP was participating in the discussion and they did not at any time say, let’s end the debate and go for clause by clause consideration of the bill. They kept fielding their own members for debate till the last,” Bansal told reporters here.

“BJP did this to play politics and they changed their stand as they said something in Lok Sabha and something else in the Rajya Sabha,” he said.

He said Minister of State for Personnel V. Narayanasamy was replying to the debate Thursday night when there was some restlessness in the opposition benches.

“Suddenly we found a ruckus there… the house was adjourned for 15 minutes. That was the stage which you would recollect I said the house has to adjourn by 12 midnight and the bill will remain pending on the register of Rajya Sabha and next time we can consider the amendments and pass the bill,” he said.

He said that there were 187 amendments to bill made by several parties and some of them contradictory and could not be accommodated.

“My allegation is that they brought large number of amendments only to see that bill is not passed. Had we accepted all of them we would have led to a situation where parliament would have been rendered a laughing stock in the eyes of the people,” he said.

“We would render ourselves to ridicule and mockery of people at large and that is the responsibility of the government and that is the difference in functions of the opposition and the government.”