New Delhi, August 15
The Parliament witnessed an unprecedented spectacle in its budget session ended last week when members cutting across party lines took sides for and against the warring Ambani brothers in their dispute over sharing the gas extracted from Krishna-Godavari basin.

In recent years, several top industrialists, including Anil Ambani, Rahul Bajaj, Vijay Mallaya, and Rajeev Chandrasekhar, have become MPs and many have even attempted to utilise Parliament to serve their business interests, like seeking membership of parliamentary committees, which had a bearing on their business ventures. Other members, however, objected to their membership of such committees on the principle of clash of interest and the matter ended at that.

But this time round, MPs flaunted their proximity to one Ambani group or the other in an unhesitant manner and took up cudgels on behalf of their respective mentors. Parimal Nathwani, an Independent Rajya Sabha member from Jharkhand, started speaking on the gas dispute by saying: “I am associated with Reliance, RIL (the company controlled by Mukesh Ambani).” He then stoutly defended his mentor and Petroleum Minister Murli Deora, who had been charged by the rival camp of protecting the interests of Mukesh Ambani.

This provoked CPM leader Brinda Karat to raise an objection. But there were others like Santosh Bagrodia who got furious, leading to prolonged heated exchanges between him and other senior members like M Venkaiah Naidu and SS Ahluwalia. Eventually, Bagrodia consented to expunction of his unparliamentary remarks.

But Nathwani-Bagrodia merely climaxed the drama started by Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav who held the Lok Sabha to ransom on July 29, till Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal made a commitment in the House that the minister concerned would speak on the issue on August 3.

Bansal said, “Sir, this matter was raised immediately after question hour and the House was adjourned for two hours. We could not transact any business. Again the same matter is being raised. Would the House be held to ransom like this that we cannot discuss anything else?”

At one stage, Mulayam Singh almost admitted his proximity to Anil Ambani, who was a member of the Rajya Sabha on the SP ticket. “It is said that we are on the side of Anil Ambani. But we are not doing his bidding,” he said. Similarly, his cousin and SP leader in the Rajya Sabha, Ram Gopal Yadav, also gave it away when he said, “Where am I speaking for anyone? I am only speaking for UP and the country.”

Besides these prominent ones, members from almost every party rose to be counted which side they stood on. Then there were the prompters.

Interestingly, apart from CPM leader Brinda Karat, who complained about the conduct of fellow MPs on this question in writing to the Rajya Sabha chairman, no leader wanted to speak on record.

But privately some of them were aghast at their fellow members taking sides in a private dispute between two business houses. A senior leader stated how one member would go and sit behind each speaker in the Rajya Sabha virtually prompting him and occasionally passing a piece of paper which would state facts as per his party’s perspective.

Another leader mentioned how a new member from UP was going around distributing papers carrying the version of one of the brothers. This member’s spouse works for the Ambanis.