Parliament impasse ends

The stalemate in Parliament that completely paralysed business during last week ended today with the government and the opposition agreeing to discuss inflation, an euphemism for price rise, on a motion without any voting.

The government appeared to have had its way on the issue at a breakfast meeting convened by leader of the House in the Lok Sabha Pranab Mukherjee with the leaders of political parties where the opposition gave up its demand for discussion under a rule, which entails voting and was the point of friction the whole of last week.

The two Houses, which had remained paralysed since the session began last Monday, were back to normal today transacting all the listed business.

Now both the sides have agreed to pass a resolution in both the Houses, which would express concern on the situation caused by inflation after discussing the "adverse impact of inflationary pressure on the common man".

The government did not concede the opposition demand of including price rise in the resolution, arguing that the issue was a continuing phenomenon which could not be stopped and instead favoured the use of the term "inflationary pressure"

Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj said that the opposition succeeded in getting the word "common man" in the resolution to which the government was objecting.

"They were not using the word 'common man', so we objected. Now the words 'adverse impact of inflationary pressure on the common man' have been included in the resolution," she said.

"This is a recognition of the protests launched by the opposition parties," CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta said.

Normlcy returned to both the Houses in the morning when they sat down to transacting business for the  first time in the monsoon session by taking up the Question Hour.

"I am happy to inform that there is an agreement between the ruling and the opposition benches on having a discussion on the adverse impact of inflation on the common man tomorrow and there will be no disruption in the proceedings of the House today," speaker Meira Kumar said in the Lok Sabha.

In the Rajya Sabha, chairman Hamid Ansari observed,"I have good news today. We will have the Question Hour." In the Rajya Sabha the discussion will take place on Wednesday.

During the hour-long meeting with Mukherjee, the opposition had pressed hard for changing the wordings of the resolution, whose draft had said "this House expresses concern at inflationary pressures on the economy and calls upon the government to contain its impact".

The issue of price rise had rocked the Parliament during almost the entire first week of the monsoon session with an angry opposition seeking to censure the government in both the Houses.

The deadlock had remained unresolved even after the Lok Sabha speaker rejected notices of adjournment motion on the issue.

The opposition has been blaming the government for failure to control rise in prices, particularly of food items and petroleum products. The general inflation has remained in the double digit while prices of food items were increasing by 9.6%.