‘Govt can ask for more FII in insurance’

So you’ll go along with Mamata Banerjee’s no-confidence motion?

We’ll take a decision on how we will tackle this later today. We could go along, for instance, with CPI’s Gurudas Dasgupta’s view of having a discussion under Rule 193 without voting. There is voting under Rule 184; we even have a Rule 185 that allows voting but in a friendly manner, after parties agree on a resolution (like we did on Iraq). I had moved a resolution like this on inflation.

What does ‘depends on how obdurate the government is’ mean? Does it mean the government has to withdraw FDI in retail for Parliament to function?

In the case of a JPC on 2G, the entire winter session was lost with the government not agreeing to it, and then they finally conceded it. The government is also not clear on what it wants—it can’t keep changing the goalpost. The government can’t give an undertaking in Parliament promising consensus before moving on FDI in retail, and then notify this without a consensus.

We’ll come to that in a minute, but effectively we’re back to where we started. You won’t allow either pension or insurance FDI to be raised to 49%…

Let’s get some facts right. For one, the Standing Committee is not just the BJP or I; the

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