CPI(M) urges Pranab not to sign ordinances

Within hours of the Cabinet deciding on Wednesday to promulgate an ordinance to raise the FDI cap in the insurance sector to 49 per cent, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) urged the President not to sign on the dotted line. Non-committal on CPI(M)’s move, the Congress described the Government’s decision as one in line with a series of efforts by this dispensation to ``subvert’’ the institutional framework of the country.

Opposing the ``ordinance raj’’, CPI(M)’s Rajya Sabha leader Sitaram Yechury wrote a letter to the President ``requesting you not to sanction such ordinances’’ which were a ``grave violation of the sanctity of Parliamentary proceedings’’.

The CPI(M) contention is that since a Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha had scrutinised the Insurance Bill and tabled its report, the draft legislation ``remains the property of the House on which a decision is pending’’. His letter also mentions the Coal Bill for which, too, an ordinance has been promulgated.

Apart from the Government taking frequent recourse to the ordinance route, Mr. Yechury flagged the fact that 13 of the 16 Bills taken up by the Lok Sabha in the Winter Session were passed without being referred to, ``thus scrutinised by Parliamentary Standing Committees’’. As a result, Select Committees were constituted in the Rajya Sabha to examine three Bills. This, according to the CPIM, is an ``unprecedented number’’ in any one session.

Asked about the ordinance, Congress spokesman Shakeel Ahmed said: ``This government is determined to weaken/subvert established institutions.’’ Wondering what the urgency is in increasing the FDI cap in insurance that the Government could not wait for the Budget Session two months away, he added for good measure that ``ordinance raj’’ is to be expected from a government which had promulgated one to appoint an officer.

The Modi Government’s first ordinance was promulgated to facilitate the appointment of former Telecom Regulatory Authority of India chairman Nripendra Mishra as Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister.