New Delhi : Even as it awaits the Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan’s decision on its demand that the party’s leader in the house be accorded the status of the leader of opposition, the Congress has raised a procedural matter related to the official number two in the government’s hierarchy after Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Participating in the general debate on the budget, former union minister Thomas observed: “There are certain signals from the government that are alarming. Why there is no number two? Isn’t there collective leadership?”
Apparently an innocuous looking query, but it points towards an internal strife in the government, where the union finance minister Arun Jaitley is the de facto number two who calls the shots in the prime minister’s absence, and union home minister Rajnath Singh, who occupies the number two seat in the Lok Sabha next to Modi.
The confusion has also arisen in bureaucratic and administrative circles as the formal communication from the prime minister’s office in this regard is not there. There have been reports that unlike in the past when the prime minister’s office would let it be known to the cabinet secretary as to which senior minister would be presiding over the cabinet meeting when the PM is abroad, this communication has not been made official.
Besides, this there is another significant decision of the BJP that has declared Modi as the party’s leader in both the houses and Jaitley as the number two in Rajya Sabha and Rajnath as the deputy leader in Lok Sabha. This position was reflected in the parliamentary party meeting held recently when no one presided over it in Modi’s absence.
In the backdrop of these developments, Thomas observed: “There is something wrong in the government. We are concerned about the unity in the cabinet. There must be dignity and transparency about these matters.”
Apparently, it was the same lack of coordination among the ministers that created an embarrassing situation for the government on the issue of the debate over the Gaza crisis.
Meanwhile, in the course of the day’s proceedings, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj informed that the Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad was not aware of the meeting between freelance journalist Ved Pratap Vaidik and the 26/11 mastermind Hafeez Saeed.”When he was not even aware of the meeting, there is no question of his facilitating it,” she asserted.
There have been allegations that the Vaidik-Saeed meeting was facilitated by the diplomatic channels.
Anil Sharma
