New Delhi:
India's coalition government failed on Thursday to push through legislation to create an independent anticorruption agency, after an exhausting day of parliamentary speechmaking, political posturing and backroom negotiations could not produce a deal, possibly stalling the bill for months.
The drama in Parliament over the proposed agency, known as a Lokpal, has dominated the Indian news media in recent days. But the larger issue of official corruption has dominated the political landscape since last summer, when public anger boiled over into huge protests led by the anticorruption campaigner Anna Hazare.
Thursday was the final day of the winter session of Parliament, and it was supposed to bring a decisive vote on the Lokpal legislation in the upper house. Instead, lawmakers adjourned at midnight, leaving without a vote after a chaotic scene of shouting and accusations.
"You can't do this," said Mohammad Hamid Ansari, India's vice president and the presiding officer of the upper house, as he vainly tried to quiet the hollering lawmakers. "This is disgraceful."
The fate of the Lokpal legislation is now uncertain. On Tuesday, the lower house of Parliament approved the government's bill, but the lack of a vote by the upper house means the measure cannot be addressed again until the next session of Parliament, scheduled to begin in late February.
In the messy aftermath, leaders of the government and the opposition blamed one another for the parliamentary breakdown. Pawan Bansal, the government minister for parliamentary affairs, said opposition leaders had proposed more than 180 amendments that required time for a government response.
But opposition leaders said the governing Congress Party deliberately avoided a vote after realizing it did not have enough support to win. In the final minutes of the session, with midnight approaching, one opposition lawmaker demanded that the session continue, shouting, "We'll sit all night!"
Arun Jaitley, the opposition leader and a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, said, "The government today is running away from this house because it is in a hopeless minority."
For months, politicians have responded to the public anger over corruption by pledging support for some sort of Lokpal. Congress Party leaders have absorbed the brunt of the criticism, but they appeared to have taken control of the issue with Tuesday's passage of the government's Lokpal measure in the lower house.
The dynamics in the upper house, known as the Rajya Sabha, are very different. The Congress Party and its allies hold a majority in the lower house, but not in the Rajya Sabha, where smaller, regional parties can often exercise greater power.
The critical blow to the government's cause actually came from an important ally in the coalition national government. Mamata Banerjee, head of the Trinamool Congress Party, declared that her party would not support the government's bill unless it was amended to remove a provision about establishing anticorruption agencies at the state level.
Unable to persuade Ms. Banerjee to change her mind, Congress Party leaders also met with emboldened resistance from opposition parties. Throughout the debate on Thursday, opposition leaders attacked the government's legislation on multiple fronts, complaining that the proposed Lokpal would not be independent enough, or that the agency would lack adequate investigatory powers, or that an affirmative action provision should not be included.
Much of the argument centered on an often-technical discussion about India's federalist structure and whether the provision concerning the creation of state-level anticorruption agencies was unconstitutional. Defenders of the bill accused opposition leaders of using such arguments as a smokescreen, intended to prevent the creation of the anticorruption agency.
Abhishek Singhvi, a Congress Party leader, said the Congress Party was "ready to stand up and be counted" and warned the opposition that "history will not forgive you."
Mr. Singhvi, who oversaw the special parliamentary committee that drafted the bill, said, "You are in search of the elusive perfect to deny the good."
The Parliament's inaction on Thursday may reinvigorate the protest movement led by Mr. Hazare. He had attempted to rally public support this week against the government's bill - calling it too weak - by staging a hunger strike. But the huge crowds of last summer did not materialize this week and Mr. Hazare called off his hunger strike prematurely, blaming poor health.
Kiran Bedi, a top adviser to Mr. Hazare, said the Thursday night spectacle in Parliament proved why the Hazare group so distrusted the government's commitment to establishing a Lokpal.
"We were hoping we would see some voting, some conclusion," Ms. Bedi said during an interview on the news channel NDTV. "You cannot trust a word. The trust deficit is huge."