The long march: NDA leaders marching towards the Rashtrapati Bhavan to present a memorandum

Rarely has a government faced such a recalcitrant Opposition that's hell-bent on torpedoing Parliament. After virtually crippling the first half of the Budget session by disrupting proceedings every day, the BJP-led NDA has now put a spoke in the second stage of the Budgetary wheel by refusing to join the 24 standing committees that scrutinise the demand for grants of each ministry.

The government has two options before it. It can intensify the ongoing confrontation by setting up the standing committees without NDA's participation and carry on with the budgetary exercise. Or it can adopt a wait and watch attitude, put the formation of the standing committees on hold and let the demand for grants face the guillotine when Parliament reconvenes after the break.

Either way, the Budget will be passed. In other words, the government need not be unduly worried about the current stand-off with the Opposition. It explains why parliamentary affairs minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee have gone out of Delhi this week instead of staying on to sort out the crisis.

Political circles are puzzled by the Opposition's decision to push for a confrontation so early in the government's tenure. In 1989, when the entire Opposition resigned from Parliament to register a strong protest against Rajiv Gandhi's government, general elections were just three months away. Gandhi had already lost his sheen because of the Bofors scandal and the Opposition's boycott of Parliament destroyed whatever little moral authority he was left with. Again, in 1995, the BJP scuttled the entire winter session of Parliament over the scam in which the then communications minister Sukh Ram was suspected of being involved. Then too, general elections were just four months away and the Narasimha Rao government was already looking fragile.

Certainly, the same cannot be said of the Manmohan Singh government, which took office barely three months ago. The BJP, however, appears to be strategising in the belief that the present ruling arrangement will not last long and a mid-term poll is inevitable. It has, therefore, started building the pressure from the beginning, questioning the government's legitimacy.

Its spirits are buoyed by its perception that it has claimed one wicket already in the sacking of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader Shibu Soren from the Union Cabinet last week. It raised the pitch of the battle against 'tainted' ministers a notch higher after that by marching to Rashtrapati Bhavan with a memorandum. The next target is to win the October state polls in Maharashtra, where the Congress-NCP government is struggling against a strong anti-incumbency factor.

Unfortunately, the NDA may have bitten off more than it can chew. Like its triumphalist attitude after last December's assembly polls frightened Sonia Gandhi into sewing up unprecedented electoral alliances that helped Congress regain power after almost a decade, its strident campaign against the Manmohan Singh Government is only serving to make the disparate coalition cling tighter together. The Left parties, for instance, have toned down their rhetoric against some of the government's economic decisions and are working hard behind the scenes to ensure that parties like the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) stay away from the NDA and the balance of numbers does not tilt the other way.

In addition, some of the NDA allies are acutely uncomfortable with the BJP's high-pitched attack on the government. Janata Dal (United) leaders privately feel that whatever their differences, the Opposition should not destabilise Parliament. In any case, they have an assembly election to fight in Bihar within six months. JD(U) sources say they want the NDA to concentrate on that at the moment.

The NDA's allies are also upset by the BJP's high-handedness on the standing committee issue. They have sent a letter to the Lok Sabha speaker clarifying that they, not the BJP or the NDA, will nominate their members for the committees. The Congress hopes to make use of these emerging contradictions to ride the ongoing storm.