The Congress’s Priya Dutt and the NCP’s Supriya Sule outside Parliament on Monday. Picture by Ramakant Kushwaha

New Delhi, Aug. 8: The BJP and the Centre have struck a “deal” for a discussion on the Commonwealth Games in Parliament through a mutually convenient arrangement.

The discussion, which will take place under rules 167 and 193 in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha respectively on Tuesday, does not entail voting.

The BJP, which stalled both Houses today demanding Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit’s resignation in connection with the CAG’s Games report, said it would be “business as usual” from now on.

The “deal” has forced both the Congress and the BJP to make compromises. According to rules of parliamentary procedure, any CAG report, no matter how grave its implications, has to be examined by the public accounts committee before Parliament can take it up. This means that despite the BJP clamour for a debate on the Games report, there was no way the government could have agreed.

So, the BJP devised a tangential way of raising the issue by moving a motion for a discussion on remarks made by the sports minister Ajay Maken on August 2, days before the CAG report was tabled in the House.

Maken had alleged in Parliament that Suresh Kalmadi was appointed the Games’ organising committee chief by the Indian Olympic Association according to an irreversible contract signed by the NDA government in 2003. The BJP has charged him with “misleading” the House.

Parliamentary affairs minister Pawan K. Bansal and his deputy Rajiv Shukla, who met Opposition leaders Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, agreed to their demand for such a discussion.

“Our job is to break the impasse in Parliament and talk to the Opposition to ensure there are no disruptions,” said Shukla.

But in the process, the government managed to limit the scope of the discourse to Maken and minimise the chances of the Opposition dragging in the names of the Prime Minister and other Congress leaders.

BJP sources claimed they would use Maken’s comments to flag other Games-related issues but refused to disclose if they would also ask for Dikshit’s head.

Jaitley and Yashwant Sinha are expected to open the discussion for the BJP in the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha. Sources said their submissions would be “pithy”. More detailed expositions would be made by Prakash Javadekar in the upper House and Kirti Azad in the lower House.

The Congress had asked its East Delhi MP Sandeep Dikshit — the chief minister’s son — to speak, stressing there was no “conflict of interest” if he did. But he reportedly declined, saying it would prompt the BJP to gun for the government “more vigorously” than otherwise.

Sandeep, who is a PAC member, has recused himself from the meetings the committee will hold on the CAG’s Games report for the same reason.

To shore up its flanks against an Opposition offensive, Bansal also reached out to the non-BJP Opposition, including the Left and the BSP, to keep them in the loop on Tuesday’s agenda. The Left was miffed with the BJP for not siding with it on the price rise resolution.

There is another reason for the Congress’s overture to the Left and the others. If PAC chief Murli Manohar Joshi decides to push for the adoption of his second draft report on the 2G spectrum allocation, the Congress needs three votes — two of the BSP and one of the Samajwadi Party — to buttress its numbers and vote out the report critical of the Prime Minister and home minister P. Chidambaram.

The BSP and the Samajwadi had voted with the government against Joshi’s first draft report that was rejected by Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar.

Parliament ruckus

Soon after Parliament convened this morning, BJP members rushed to the well raising slogans against Dikshit. “Sheila ka istifaa lao… ab to yeh spashth hai Sheila Dikshit bhrashth hai (Get Sheila’s resignation… now it’s confirmed Sheila Dikshit is corrupt),” they shouted. Both Houses were first adjourned till noon and then for the day.

In the Lok Sabha, Navjot Sidhu took the lead in raising slogans. In the Rajya Sabha, Hema Malini was apparently stopped by Arun Jaitley from joining colleagues who had raced to the well.