A Day with Distinction

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government finally reached its destination in Tuesday’s Trust Vote with 275 in its favour but the day can be well termed as a distinctive one in Indian parliamentary history. Indian democracy sunk to its lowest when three BJP MPs shower bribed money, which they were allegedly being offered by Samajwadi Party to abstain from the vote.

The floor of the house narrated a new story in front of a progressive young India, which is now trapped in the vested and dirty political leadership devoid of ‘national interest’. Moreover, the two day special session also witnessed a bitter personal attack by parliamentarians and undeniably these are the severe jolts that our democracy has suffered during the last six-decades.

Parliament certainly plumbed into new depth when the entire nation heard the term ‘horse-trading’ where representatives of the people were subjected to be bought and sold in the ‘market of politics,’ either to favour or oppose the government. The speaker has very rightly described the bribery "most unfortunate and a very sad day in the history of Parliament," if it is proved true.

The disruption of the House comprising of baseless arguments with charges and counter-charges, moreover, regardless of the shocking allegation is proved correct or not, has displayed what is wrong in Indian politics, a murky nature of politics being a dirty business, where people’s representatives put their votes up for sale.

Earlier, it was Lal Krishna Advani, the prime ministerial candidate for BJP who described Manmohan Singh uttering him as the nikama (useless) prime minister and even devalued the office of PM. And then it was the ideology master ‘Left’ parties who degraded the significance of the chair of Speaker by compelling Somnath Chatterjee to quit his post as a CPM MP and vote against the government. Such things only worsened the democratic values and parliamentary decorum.

The Manmohan Singh-led UPA government survived a no-confidence vote receiving the much-needed political boost and backing to secure a nuclear deal with United States, but the government has to answer many questions based on the democratic values to regain the trust ahead of the general elections.