The Hindu : National : Advani unhappy with absenteeism

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Wednesday, Dec 15, 2004

National

National

Advani unhappy with absenteeism

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, DEC. 14. The Bharatiya Janata Party president, L.K. Advani, is worried over the falling attendance of party members at the BJP's weekly parliamentary party meetings. It has been noted that about a dozen of them failed to cast their vote in the recent elections to various boards to which Parliament elects some members.

The party spokesperson and deputy leader in the Lok Sabha, V.K. Malhotra, today confirmed that Mr. Advani had asked him to find out the names of the absentees and "write to them'' asking for an explanation.

At the party's parliamentary meeting today it was once again mentioned that the Government had failed to bring forward any substantial legislation, except the bill to replace the repealed Prevention of Terrorism Act and a few other bills to replace the ordinances.

The party noted that it was likely the Government would not bring forward the important patents bill although legislation on this subject should be in place by January 1, 2005. "We fear that later the Government will bring it through the ordinance route,'' Mr. Malhotra said. And he indicated that the BJP would oppose it. The issue of patents was important. What is done or not done in the legislation could have an impact on the huge pharmaceutical industry in India and it would be wrong to legislate on it through ordinance instead of giving Parliament an opportunity to debate all the points, Mr. Malhotra added.

At the meeting this morning, the former Commerce Minister, Arun Jaitley, gave a presentation to party MPs on the technical issues involved in the patents' legislation and the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights. His view was that it was important to safeguard product patents.

Mr. Malhotra later told reporters that the Government had not proposed any legislation for next week's business in Parliament. But there was agreement that there would be a debate on the mid-term appraisal of the economy by the Finance Ministry released on Monday and a debate on the Tenth Five-year Plan.

The mid-year appraisal had shown that the economy was not in such a good shape — in six months the fiscal deficit had already reached 80 per cent of the figure estimated for the month, inflation had not been brought under control and could worsen further because of climbing fiscal deficit, and the growth was much lower than that achieved by the National Democratic Alliance Government last fiscal.

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