The Trinamool Congress desperately needs to send its MPs, particularly the newly elected ones, for a crash training course in parliamentary procedures. On the day the controversial citizenship amendment bill was put to vote in the Lok Sabha, TMC bosses discovered that two of its MPs were missing from the House. The missing MPs were Mimi Chakraborty and Deepak Adhikari also known as Deb. One of them is first-time MP and both are popular cine actors in Bengal.

Inquiries revealed that they had signed the attendance register that morning and then disappeared. Apparently, both had shooting engagements for the day so they never came back to Parliament although the party had issued a whip for all members to be present for voting. As it happened, the debate carried on till late night and the bill was put to vote only after midnight.

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When the missing MPs were questioned later to explain their absence, both expressed utter astonishment. Whip? What is a whip, they asked. Obviously, no one had thought it necessary to explain to them the meaning of a whip and the criticality of being present in the House to vote on important bills even at midnight.

Technically, defying a whip invites disciplinary action from the party but since both are new MPs, they have been let off with a stern warning. Of course, the BJP and its allies and friends have brute majority in the Lok Sabha so the two missing TMC votes really didn’t affect the outcome. The bill passed with a huge margin.

Marshalling its forces

The BJP, on the other hand, took the vote on the citizenship amendment bill very seriously. It ensured that all members were present and voting, not just in the Lok Sabha where it has a comfortable majority, but also in the Rajya Sabha where its numbers are a little thin. For instance, environment minister Prakash Javadekar cut short his visit to Spain where he had gone to attend the 25th Conference of Parties on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The conference began on December 2 and continued till December 13.

However, Javadekar flew back to Delhi late on December 10 to be present in the Rajya Sabha for the vote the next day. He is a Rajya Sabha MP. While Javadekar had finished delivering his address outlining India’s commitment to reducing emissions and meeting international climate change goals, activists were sorry that he was unable to stay till the end of the conference. Negotiations are at a crucial stage. India was of course represented by environment ministry officials. But a political presence makes a difference at international meets. Unfortunately, the citizenship amendment bill vote was calling and domestic commitments always come first.

Choice of speakers

The BJP’s political game plan behind the citizenship amendment bill was evident in its choice of speakers during the debate. In the Lok Sabha, it fielded as many as five MPs from West Bengal and three from Assam. The party has its eye on upcoming assembly elections in both states in 2021 and is hoping that CAB will harness them a consolidated Hindu vote, particularly from migrant Hindu communities from Bangladesh.

RSS sources believe the biggest electoral benefit could come from Bengal where they estimate the migrant Hindu Bangladeshi population to be around 72 lakhs. Most of them belong to the Matua Scheduled Caste community and are concentrated in three districts of Bengal where they swing votes. These are the areas where the BJP swept in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. According to RSS sources, overall there are around 1.5 crore Hindu migrants from Bangladesh who stand to benefit from the new citizenship bill.

About 6 lakh of them are in Assam. Interestingly, despite the big focus on Bengal, the BJP approach in the Rajya Sabha during the debate was lackadaisical as compared to the Lok Sabha. Where it fielded five speakers from Bengal in the lower house, in the upper house, there seemed to be no plan. The BJP has two speakers from Bengal in the Rajya Sabha, Swapan Dasgupta and Rupa Ganguli.

The latter was not given time to speak and the former was made to sit down after two minutes just as he got into the flow. Dasgupta even complained on Twitter that the preparations he made for his speech went waste because he was cut short. The difference is that in the Lok Sabha, Amit Shah personally directed the flow of the debate while in the Rajya Sabha, it was left to Bhupendra Yadav. He probably did not understand the importance of letting Bengal voices of the BJP be heard on the issue.

Close friends

Although NCP MPs like to pretend that Shiv Sena MPs are their new-found friends now that they are in government together in Maharashtra, relations between the Sena and NCP boss Sharad Pawar have always been close. Marathi journalists point out that Sena spokesperson Sanjay Raut has been hosting a traditional Maharashtrian fish lunch every year for Pawar. The event is strictly for Maharashtrians so other journalists are not invited.But this has been an annual calendar event for the winter for the past four years ever since Raut became a Rajya Sabha MP.