Congress deputy leader and Leader of Upper House, Anand Sharma and Ghulam Nabi Azad, respectively, emerge from Parliament on Wednesday evening. Anil Sharma Congress deputy leader and Leader of Upper House, Anand Sharma and Ghulam Nabi Azad, respectively, emerge from Parliament on Wednesday evening. Anil Sharma

The Subramanian Swamy-Congress faceoff on AgustaWestland may have been the most awaited Wednesday, but it was Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and “Birbal’s bamboo” that brought curtains down on a more than five-hour discussion in Rajya Sabha.

Parrikar started off with a popular Akbar-Birbal story about how Birbal caught a thief with the help of a bamboo stick. But as his tenacious written speech tested the concentration and the patience of the House, catcalls of “bamboo kat raha” soon erupted into full fledged protests from not just the Congress benches but also others like the JD(U).

Even after a ruling from the Chair that a minister is allowed to read a written speech, cries of “point of order”, “Rule 18” erupted regularly from the unusually crowded opposition benches. Of the 65 Congress MPs in the Upper House, about 48 were present during the debate. The Defence Minister read on undaunted through cries of “Ye Natwarlal hai” (reference to a movie of that name), but the speech clearly fell on deaf ears as Congress’s Renuka Chaudhry declared close to 7 pm: “This cannot go on. We will not sit beyond 7 pm.”

In the end, the Congress walked out nearly ten minutes before that deadline.

Chaudhry was among nearly 12 Congress MPs, including Vijaylakshmi Sadho, Parvez Hashmi, Rajni Patil, who had left the House just before 6 pm, but came trooping back the moment Ahmed Patel started speaking.

Swamy’s attack, however, ended up being a sideshow during the day. MoS, Parliamentary Affairs, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi gave up all his party’s time to ensure Swamy had his say; and Swamy stretched 17 minutes beyond the total time allotted to the treasury benches (the minister’s reply not included). But Congress’s insistence that everything that is said in the House would have to be backed by authenticated documents that are tabled forced Swamy to close with a reference to alleged middleman Christian Michel’s apparent efforts to buy favourable media narrative rather than training his guns on the Gandhi family.

The first interruption during his speech came from JD(U)’s Sharad Yadav whose remark “paani pilao inko (give him some water)” drew an instant “aapko pani pilayenge (we will make you drink water)” response from Swamy. The Congress lost no time in protesting the “disrespect” shown to a senior member. As the proceedings began, the Congress benches were in a belligerent mood right from the word go. A government proposal to allow Parrikar to first lay the facts on the table had immediately brought some Congress MPs on their feet.

But even more than Swamy, the choicest Congress criticism was reserved for TMC’s Sukhendu Sekhar Roy. He was greeted by Congress lawmakers with cries of “BJP ka dalal, baitho” (Sit down, BJP’s middleman). Throughout Roy’s speech, Congress MPs made snide remarks about the “Saradha-Narada”, the two corruptions scandals that the Trinamool Congress has been alleged to be involved in.

But even as sparks flew, Motilal Vohra slept through most of the heated debate.

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