NEW DELHI: The Rajya Sabha unanimously approved a motion under article 355 moved by the Congress member, Arjun Singh, calling upon the government to intervene in Gujarat under article 356 of the Constitution ensuring that the governance of the state was in accordance with the Constitution. The motion was supported by the BJP which unlike in the Lok Sabha does not have a majority in the house.

At the outset of the debate which was initiated by Mr Arjun Singh the BJP leader in the House, Jaswant Singh held out the promise that the BJP and its allies in the government that the coalition “accept the motion in letter and spirit” and argued that the Centre had already implemented some aspects of the motion. The resolution expresses anguish over the happenings in Gujarat and urges the Centre to intervene effectively under article 356 of the Constitution to protect the lives and properties of the citizens.

Speaking on the motion, Jaswant Singh told the house “the government shares the sentiments in totality. There is no difference in the phraseology of the motion. We are all naked in the bathroom, so there is no slinging of charges. We accept the motion with the reference to article 355 of the Constitution. The home ministry had already taken action and will take more action. Let us press the motion with unanimity.” He further urged the members to work together in the task of rehabilitating the victims of the riots.

Apparently the opposition and the treasury benches had decided beforehand that the proceedings should be in a spirit of accommodation instead of being recriminatory. The framing of the resolution was so worded that it did not provide any scope of acrimony in the debate. Thus the treasury benches did not react violently when the Congress member Kapil Sibal reminded the house that article 355 which drew the attention of the house to the manner in which governance of the state was being conducted which went against the Constitution and article 356 which called for central intervention to correct this state of affairs were to be read as one piece, the treasury benches remained silent. All that Mr Jaswant Singh could say was that the centre had begun to act under article 355. It was pointed out that in the event of its failure to do so, it would have been called to act under article 356.

The farthest the Congress spokesman could go was to argue that by endorsing the motion, the government had admitted that the path had been opened for the use of the provisions of article 356 and therefore it was necessary for the centre to issue a notice under the article informing the state government that it intends to take action under it. The fact of the matter was that under normal conditions the centre could enforce compliance correctives to the erring state under articles 256 and 257 but action under articles 355 and following it under article 356 were intended as emergency provisions. This fine point of difference between the two sets of provisions were not brought into the debate which could have ruined the cooperative atmosphere which ruled the proceedings.

This spirit of accommodation with each other and a sense of common purpose had been sadly lacking in the debate on the issue in the Lok Sabha. In fact, the proceedings in the house seemed to have been jinxed in the house from day one when the opposition raised the matter with a demand for a debate concerning the state government under article 184 which provided for a decision on vote over the motion.

While the opposition was adamant in moving the motion under article 184, the treasury benches were equally firm on rejecting the demand. The result was a stalemate which for a whole week persisted with the speaker unable to call the house and found himself adjourning the house without any transacting business for a whole week. Finally, in the end, the speaker was unable to harmonise the contesting opinions and decided that the house should go by his ruling over the issue.