New Delhi: When the Opposition on Wednesday demanded the Centre declare that the country is afflicted by drought and offer financial assistance to farmers, it wasn’t leader of Opposition L.K. Advani or any other representative from the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), leader Sharad Yadav who raised the issue and initiated the discussion.
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Analysts and members of rival parties see this as another instance of the growing invisibility of and inertia in the BJP.
Yadav, whose party has 20 members in the lower house of Parliament, is also the convenor of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The BJP has 116 seats in the 543-member House and is, officially, the main opposition party.
“The BJP has become invisible in the Lok Sabha. Instead, Sharad Yadav has emerged as the leader of Opposition,” said Congress member of Parliament (MP) P.C. Chacko.
The result is that it has suddenly become easier for the new look Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) to conduct legislative business, ever since the new Parliament was convened in June.
Thus, when railway minister Mamata Banerjee criticized the performance of her predecessor Lalu Prasad, who was then one of the leading lights of the previous UPA government, and said she would prepare a white paper on the dismal state of the finances of the railways, the BJP failed to exploit the opportunity inherent in the UPA criticizing the UPA.
Leading the charge: Sharad Yadav. S. Burmaula / Hindustan Times
The party itself claims it is providing “constructive opposition”, but analysts believe its performance in the House is a manifestation of the defeat it suffered in the 15th general election and the subsequent infighting between senior party leaders. Meanwhile, the Congress, inspired by the unexpected margin of its electoral victory, has taken the leadership of key political causes such as reservation for women—especially after it managed to swing the appointment of Meira Kumar as Lok Sabha’s first woman speaker.
The facts
According to data compiled by PRS Legislative Research, an independent research entity, some of the smaller opposition parties such as the JD(U), the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) have collectively initiated 24% of the total Parliamentary debates in this session, as against 23% by the BJP. This is in contrast to their strength in the House: while little over one in five members of the Lok Sabha belong to the BJP, a little over one in 10 belong to these five parties.