Cabinet withdraws Ordinance

The Cabinet has dumped its controversial ordinance and the Bill aimed at shielding convicted politicians, giving Congress scion Rahul Gandhi a Pyrrhic victory of sorts as it came at a cost to the UPA government’s prestige.
The decision to unanimously junk the ordinance and the Bill was taken by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Union Cabinet at a meeting on Wednesday evening, seeking to draw the curtains on a dramatic political saga that embarrassed the government, exposed its head to Opposition barbs and triggered disquiet among allies. The development will deal a body blow to former Bihar CM Lalu Prasad, who has been convicted in the fodder scam case. In the event of the court awarding him a seven-year sentence on Thursday, he cannot contest elections for the next 13 years.
At the Cabinet meeting, NCP leader and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar expressed displeasure over the handling of the issue. According to senior ministers present in the meeting, Pawar said the decision on the ordinance should have been deliberated properly so that the government could have been saved this embarrassment. Earlier in the day, another ally and Cabinet minister, National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah, had raised the question of “sanctity of the Cabinet decisions” and said promulgating an ordinance was a political decision. He said overturning a decision of the Cabinet will not reflect well on the government’s functioning. After raising these objections, the allies went along with the decision to withdraw the ordinance and the Bill.
The Cabinet decision on Wednesday evening was preceded by two meetings to placate a hurt prime minister — a one-on-one between Singh and Rahul Gandhi and the Congress core group — as well as a meeting between the prime minister and President Pranab Mukherjee to inform him about the rethink in the government over the ordinance.
Sources said during the meeting between Singh and Rahul Gandhi, the Congress vice-president explained his reservations on the ordinance and clarified that his public outburst should not be seen as undermining the prime minister’s position. Gandhi had last Friday barged into a Congress press conference and declared the ordinance as “nonsense” that should be “torn up and thrown away”.
His outburst, which some viewed as an attempt to cut the party’s losses for backing a deeply unpopular legislation, was viewed as embarrassing for the government, with analysts and political rivals saying it undermined the PM, especially at a time he was overseas and meeting other heads of state.
On Tuesday, the PM expressed his unhappiness over Rahul Gandhi’s attack on the Cabinet’s decision, but scotched all talk of him resigning over the issue by philosophically noting that he was “used to ups and downs and I have learnt to take things in my stride”. But the issue saw strains developing in the ties between the PM and Congress’ first family, as Singh sought to underline that the ordinance was not just the government’s decision and had the stamp of the party too.