The Hindu : Jaitley, Sibal cross swords

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 27, 2002

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Jaitley, Sibal cross swords

By Sandeep Dikshit

NEW DELHI, MARCH 26. Today's joint session of Parliament was a witness to cut, thrust and parry of a courtroom performed with scintillating perfection by two of the country's finest legal brains from the younger generation.

Taking the floor first, the Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, avoided the pirouette, leaning instead on facts as expressed in percentages and years in an attempt at demolishing all arguments trotted by the Opposition in the two previous debates in both Houses of Parliament as well as outside.

Taking the podium soon after Mr. Jaitley had completed his address, Kapil Sibal, Congress member from the Rajya Sabha, brought to his speech his background in theatre.

There was a hint of Shakespeare and a touch of Dickens as he seemed to continue with his eloquent spell on the same subject last week in the Upper House.

While the committed on both sides of the divide warmly applauded the two warriors in turns, the rhythm of the two legal stalwarts was affected by frequent interruptions, one of which lasted 10 minutes.

They, however, had their say thanks to the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Pramod Mahajan's energetic patrolling of the more volatile treasury aisles boasting a close-knit complement of mandir-wallahs and a disparate group of dissenters on the other side who failed to harmonise their action because of the ideological divide among the Congress, the Left and the `secular' camp in the Opposition.

At the outset, the Law Minister took the battle into the Opposition camp.

While he would have been happier had the naysayers suggested modifications in the proposed law, Mr. Jaitley was also prepared to demolish the two hindrances cited by the Opposition -- that the timing of its introduction in Parliament was politically motivated and that the earlier law boasted of a poor conviction rate and was ridden with loopholes. He was also not prepared to yield to the Opposition's charge that consultations were desultory.

"The only consideration is to contain and punish terrorism, there is no other reason at all,'' he declared, adding that the law was thrust upon the country because soon after the September 11 incident, the United Nations had enjoined upon all its members to frame an anti-terrorism law.

Mr. Sibal avoided the Law Minister's battering approach in favour of a teasing and caustic technique. It was erroneous to cite the U.S. anti-terrorism to justify empowering the Indian police with similar laws.

"In the U.S., do they have a Governor who quotes the Newton's third law? In the U.S., did they ever have a macabre dance of terror that made animals out of normally decent human beings?'' Given the poor record of the police while booking people under normal laws, he apprehended a worse state of affairs once the law enforcement agencies were armed with the anti-terrorism law that brooked no dissent and gave no relief for at least a year.

He felt a joint session was unnecessary had the Government looked at the matter with some objectivity. "Not only is the polity divided on the issue but the people are also divided on the law,'' he observed, beseeching the Government to heal the divide by referring the Bill to a joint select committee comprising representatives from both Houses of Parliament. But he felt the Government was not likely to take up the offer because it was not interested in negotiations.

The joint session probably had its best moments of a substantial debate while the two lawyers held centre-stage for nearly two hours in the afternoon. Their more politically inclined colleagues failed to inject a similar sense of tangibility and a thorough homework.

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