New Delhi, December 23
Even though the 11 MPs, accused of misconduct for asking questions for cash, were today expelled by the two Houses of Parliament, there is strong undercurrent of discontent among the parliamentary fraternity.

Many sitting members of the two Houses, whom The Tribune spoke with, tend to agree with the BJP stand that procedure followed by the Lok Sabha was not “proper” and was against the “spirit of law”.

A Congress MP said the power to expel was not vested in Parliament by constitutional framers who in their wisdom gave power to suspend, reprimand or impose a fine on a member but did not empower Parliament to throw out an elected member from the House.

“Though we are bound with the whip of the party to vote in favour of the resolution, many of us do not agree with the manner in which the Lok Sabha expelled 10 MPs without giving them a chance either to put their viewpoint or their case. They have been executed without even a shred of defence from their side”, he said.

An RJD MP said the right course would have been to send the entire issue to the Privileges Committee instead of going for “hasty hanging” of the MPs for their alleged crime.

“Today’s expulsions would have serious consequences for the future as Parliament has opened the pandora’s box. The course of natural justice has not been followed. It has been done as if it is not a Parliament but a kangaroo court”, a former Janata Dal MP, who was a minister in the Gujral government said.

“The Lok Sabha has expelled MPs, who have been elected by lakhs of voters. Few hundred MPs at the dictates of their respective parties have usurped the right of recall which even the electorate has been denied”, a former MP said.

“Even the legal opinion is not clear on this issue as two divergent judgements have been delivered by the Punjab and Haryana High Court and the Madhya Pradesh High Court and the Supreme Court has not yet given its view on the issue”, a lawyer-turned-MP observed.

“The approach adopted in this case would take the country on the path of mobocracy as the issue is being decided on the basis of emotions”, a woman MP from the Lok Sabha said as “they have been followed without a proper procedure or well-laid rules of the two Houses of Parliament”.

New Delhi, December 23
The outgoing BJP President, Mr L K Advani, was not consulted by his party colleagues in the Rajya Sabha today on the debate on expulsion of tainted MPs in both Houses of Parliament, a clear writing on the wall for Mr Advani.

The BJP walked out of the Lok Sabha when the motion for expelling the tainted MPs was put to voice vote. There was no walkout by the BJP in the Upper House when the motion was put to voice vote.

The divergent stands taken by the BJP in the two Houses of Parliament shows that the second- rung leadership of the BJP has already stopped taking Mr Advani into confidence on important policy decisions.

The BJP had proposed amendments to the motion in both Houses and the party had issued a whip to its members to be present. Despite this, BJP’s leader in the Rajya Sabha Jaswant Singh did not insist on division of votes in the Upper House.

Mr Jaswant Singh took this step after discussing the matter with Mr Arun Jaitley and Ms Sushma Swaraj so that the party was found not even obliquely supportive of corruption. The significant thing is that the Singh-Jaitley-Swaraj trio did not consider it necessary or important to discuss the matter with Mr Advani, who is due to quit the post of President next week.

When BJP member Chhatrapal Singh was expelled from the Rajya Sabha and while the fate of the BJP’s five more MPs was being discussed in the Lok Sabha, Mr Advani sent Mr Haren Pathak to Mr Jaitley. Mr Jaitley briefed Mr Pathak of the the policy the BJP had adopted in the Rajya Sabha and stressed that the same policy be adopted in the Lower House too so that the party did not look a divided House on the issue of corruption.

Mr Pathak went back to Mr Advani and told him what had happened. Then Mr Advani himself went to the Central Hall looking for Mr Jaitley. After discussions with Mr Jaitley, Mr Advani called Mr Vijay Kumar Malhotra also to the Central Hall.

However, Mr Malhotra, who had moved an amendment to the motion, did not agree to this strategy.

New Delhi, December 23
The kin of BSP founder Kanshi Ram failed to secure an order from the Supreme Court to take him to his native village in Ropar District in Punjab for the last rites of his mother, who died yesterday.

Advocate Rishi Malhotra, counsel for Kanshi Ram’s brother Dalwara Singh and other members of the family moved the petition before Chief Justice, Y.K. Sabharwal pleading for a direction to BSP supremo Mayawati to let them take Kanshi Ram to Ropar to perform the last rites of his mother Bishan Kaur, as he was the elder son.

Refusing to entertain the petition, the Chief Justice said that no order was required to be passed in the matter. The petition was moved before the CJI at his residence due to on going winter holidays.

Dalwara Singh along with other members of his family had been fighting a legal battle with Mayawati over the alleged illegal confinement of the BSP founder by her at her residence in the capital and on his “inadequate” treatment for the past few years.

Kanshi Ram as per the latest report of a medical team, sent to the apex court earlier, was seriously ill and was not in a position to communicate properly and fit to give any statement.

Bishan Kaur herself was in the forefront of seeking the custody of Kanshi Ram till last month. The frail 95-year-old climbing the stairs of the Supreme Court and Delhi High Court with the support of her son Dalwara Singh and other members of the family on the hearing dates was a common sight.

In her petition filed earlier, which is still pending in the apex court, she had alleged that Kashi Ram was not being given proper treatment at Mayawati’s residence. He needed hospitalisation. On the other hand, Mayawati in her reply had stated that he was getting the best of medical care.

New Delhi, December 23
When the winter session of Parliament commenced last month, the Congress was clearly on the defensive as it found itself fending off charges of corruption in the face of an aggressive BJP campaign on the Volcker report revelations. But when the session ended today, the situation had undergone a dramatic change.

The UPA-Left combine came out smelling of roses for taking a principled stand on corruption while the BJP found itself in the dock as six of its members were involved in the cash-for-queries sting operation.

Not just that, the BJP was isolated as its own allies disagreed with it on the expulsion of the tainted MPs. In fact, the BJP itself was a house divided as was evident from the differing positions it took in the debate on the expulsion of the tainted MPs in the two Houses.

Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani surprised his own party in the Lok Sabha when he announced that they disagreed with the motion on the expulsion of the 10 MPs and led a walkout while his counterpart in the Rajya Sabha Jaswant Singh felt the House should not appear divided on such a serious issue.

This was being put down to the internal leadership crisis in the BJP as its leaders had initially told UPA floor managers that they would press for the adoption of its amendment but would not oppose the motion on expulsion.

In sharp contrast to the Opposition, the UPA-Left combine was a picture of solidarity.

Not only were all the partners of the ruling coalition united on this matter but they also managed to get the open support of the Janata Dal (U), which castigated the BJP for its stand on probity in public life in severe terms.

This session also saw the JD (U) becoming more assertive vis-a-vis the BJP. Emboldened by its victory in the Bihar elections, JD (U) leaders are no longer shy of differing with the BJP as it did today and on the Constitution Amendment Bill on quotas in private educational institutions. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who was in Delhi today, met Mr Dasmunshi and Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee before the vote.

But the last-minute decision of the BSP to vote with the motion was the real surprise of the evening. The BSP had been highly critical of the motion since it stood to loose three members but just before Lok Sabha leader Pranab Mukherjee got up to make his closing speech, party chief Mayawati sent a message to Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunshi informing him about her party’s decision to go along with the motion.

Although everything eventually worked according to plan, UPA managers were a trifle worried about the adequate presence of members at the time of the vote since it took a deliberate decision not to issue whips to the members as they wanted the members to act according to their conscience and not under duress. It was stated that a large number of backbenchers from the UPA parties were not happy with the move to expel the MPs but eventually went along with the diktat of their leaders.

RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav was not present but he had issued instructions to his members that they vote for the motion. The fact that its bete noire JD (U) was supporting the motion helped consolidate the RJD members as they did not want to be seen as condoning corruption.

Chennai, December 23
A woman in southern Tamil Nadu who lost all her four children on December 26 last year in the tsunami, is a mother again, as a result of the recanalisation procedure she underwent some months ago.

Agnes Raj had no hope of motherhood, as she had already undergone tubectomy as a family planning measure after she had four children.

On the night of December 18, Agnes, the 26-year-old wife of a fisherman gave birth to a baby-girl, because of the recanalisation procedure she went through with the help of government support.

Agnes, who lives in the fishing hamlet of Kottilpadu in Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu, more than 700 km away from the state capital, gave birth to her child at the same private nursing home at the district headquarters in Nagercoil, where she had a successful recanalisation many months ago.

After the tsunami, she came to know about the government’s recanalisation scheme and underwent the surgery last February. Sunday night bore the fruit of her decision. The baby, weighing 3.35 kg, was healthy, according to doctors.

Agnes was one of the mothers who accepted the government’s offer of financial help for reopening their fallopian tubes to bring back their ability to conceive. The government started the scheme after it was found many of them who lost their children in tsunami had undergone tubectomy.

Soon after the tsunami disaster, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa announced an assistance of up to Rs 25,000 for recanalisation to anyone willing to undergo a reversal of the earlier family planning operation.

According to officials, this is the first birth after recanalisation among tsunami mothers, though a couple of others suffered miscarriage. At least two women survivors in India’s worst tsunami-hit Nagapattinam district, which accounted for 70 per cent of the deaths in mainland India, are pregnant since going through recanalisation. But Agnes gets the credit for being the first to bear a child among the lot.

“This birth marks a big success for the government’s special scheme,” said Kanyakumari District Collector Sunil Paliwal after visiting the mother and baby at the hospital.

Dr Indira Surendran, the private doctor who performed the microsurgical reversal sterilization, said, “I have under our care six more women who have undergone the reversal procedure and have since conceived.”

Actually the idea of recanalisation was not a post-tsunami phenomenon. It was the Thanjavur District Collector Dr J. Radhakrishnan who first thought about the idea when last year 94 children perished in a fire at a school in Kumbakonam. Many mothers had lost their children in the gruesome tragedy. Few women who underwent recanalisation have already given birth.

New Delhi, December 23
As the first step towards setting up an early warning system for tsunami in the country by September 2007, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) is getting ready for establishing a real time seismic monitoring network in the country.

As per IMD officials, tenders for procuring equipment for setting up the network on 17 locations on the mainland and the Andaman and Nicobar arch have already been floated. And the network, which will be able to generate first-cut information about location and magnitude of an earthquake within the first three to four minutes of occurrence, will be in place by next year.

IMD seismologists say the automatic network will generate first rough parameters of an earthquake in the first three to four minutes and help initiate the disaster management process for tsunami in coastal areas well within the first crucial minutes for evacuation and disaster mitigation.

All earthquakes do not generate tsunamis and the generation of such a phenomenon is largely dependent on the magnitude, the type of movement and the shallowness of the focus of an earthquake.

India lies in close proximity to the high seismicity Alpine Himalayan zone, one of the three largest seismic belts in the world, and scientists world-wide have predicted high-intensity earthquakes in the region in the very near future.

However, while the IMD scientists desist from committing themselves and issuing any such predictions for the near future, saying that it is just not possible to do so, they add that determining whether an earthquake will generate tsunami is possible.

The complete system, whereby even minute changes in ocean water can be monitored, will be in place by September 2007.

Seismically the region has been most active and nearly a year after the December 26 great Sumatra earthquake, which generated the killer tsunami waves off eastern coast in the country, the IMD has recorded more than 400 aftershocks of magnitude five and above on the Richter Scale in the region.

IMD scientists say aftershocks after any major earthquake of this magnitude is common with the number of smaller earthquakes well being in millions.

Aftershocks of the 2004 Sumatra quake, which measured 9.3 on the Richter Scale and has been recorded the second largest in the world after the 1960 Alaska quake, are likely to continue for the another eight to 10 years though their magnitude and intensity will show a declining trend exponentially in terms of space and time.

Recent reports suggest that certain dynamic changes are undergoing in the earth internally. To be able to predict earthquakes accurately is a challenge before scientists. 

New Delhi, December 23
The Cabinet has approved a national policy for setting up a mechanism for promoting and protecting the rights of the disabled and providing them equal opportunities to participate in the society.

The policy, cleared late on Thursday evening by the Cabinet presided over by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, will also enhance the dignity and self-respect of the disabled persons, Information and Broadcasting Minister P.R. Dasmunsi told mediapersons here on Friday.

He said the policy focused on the prevention of disabilities, rehabilitation measures, early detection and intervention and provided for assertive devices.

It also envisaged development of professionals in their rehabilitation, education and economic empowerment, including self-employment and creation of barrier-free environment and social security, he said.

The policy addressed problems of women and children with disabilities, outlined the role of NGOs in providing services to such handicapped persons and provided for research and data collection specific to their needs.

The policy document would provide guidance to the Central Government ministries, state governments, NGOs and other stakeholders for taking up programmes for persons with disabilities, he said.