NDA likely to lift its boycott of speaker

New Delhi: The opposition National Democratic Alliance (NDA) may lift its boycott of the Lok Sabha's presiding officer soon.

All constituents of the opposition alliance are scheduled to meet tomorrow to discuss the matter.

Hectic parleys have given rise to the hope of ending the unsavoury chapter including two meetings between Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and the opposition lawmakers.

Sources in the NDA said that lifting the boycott now is just a mere formality considering Chatterjee has accepted most of their demands.

NDA leaders were scheduled to meet on Friday to review their boycott decision. The meeting, however, had to be deferred until tomorrow since most of them were out of station on account of the weekend.

The NDA had decided to boycott its meetings with Chatterjee and the Business Advisory Committee on Wednesday accusing him of discrimination and maintaining double standards.

The opposition was enraged over Chatterjee disallowing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members from raising the issue of their national president Rajnath Singh's arrest at Singur in West Bengal while participating in a rally to protest allocation of fertile land for setting up of a car manufacturing plant.

Unintentional

Chatterjee allowed the government to carry on the scheduled business and the Lok Sabha passed a Bill renaming Uttaranchal state as Uttarakhand amid din without any debate.

NDA sources said that during their meetings, Chatterjee rejected the charge of adopting double standards against the opposition and said all his actions and public admonitions of defiant MPs was unintentional.

He has, however, assured the opposition he would in future ensure that no official business was transacted amid din.

Chatterjee, 77, is the first Marxist leader to become the Lok Sabha Speaker and shares an uneasy relationship with the BJP in particular. He had offered to resign during the monsoon session of parliament in August after former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said that the speaker fails to infuse confidence in them.