NEW DELHI: Opposition members of Parliament are unlikely to quit their Lok Sabha seats in protest against the Government’s Persistent refusal to withdraw the Action Taken Report (ATR) on the JPC recommendations on the Securities scandal.
Several Opposition leaders have mentioned the possibility of en masse resignation from the Lok Sabha to put moral pressure on the Government to withdraw the ATR and to take action against institutions, bureaucrats and ministers named in the JPG report. But the prevailing feeling among the non-Congress parties is that such a course of action could be disastrous.
Few Opposition leaders, however, want to go on record with this at the moment.
Several younger Janata Dal MPs feel that a much more effective way would have been to continue blocking the proceedings of Parliament on a daily basis.
“What could they have done? Moved a resolution to suspend all of us for the rest of the session? That would have been more preferable as that would have enabled us to gain greater political mileage. And more importantly, the onus for the absence of the Opposition in that ease would have been on the Government or the Speaker,” felt a Janata Dal MP from Bihar.
Opposition leaders confess that they are amazed at the brazen manner in which the Government had flatly refused to take any worthwhile action on the mega Scam. They had pinned great hopes that the boycott would encourage government action.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 19, 1994
