Resuming the budget session after the recess, the Lok Sabha on Thursday repeatedly plunged into pandemonium and adjournments. And the surprising part was that Sonia Gandhi was the one who orchestrated the scenes.

Trouble started when, during the impromptu discussion on the Dantewada massacre, Yashwant Sinha of BJP accused the Congress of "making compromises with the Maoists for petty political gains in the Andhra Pradesh assembly elections."

It was then that Sonia Gandhi turned around and signaled the party MPs to rise in protest. The response was not limited to the Congress MPs as even parliamentary affairs minister Pawan Kumar Bansal and his deputy Narayansamy jumped to their feet to allege that BJP was hand in glove with the Maoists.

Bansal went to the extent of pointing out that the BJP had aligned with a party (in Jharkhand) whose ministers and members were backing the Maoists in this kind of brutal violence. At one stage it appeared as if the Congress did not want the Dantewada debate.

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is leader of the house, was not in the Lok Sabha when the uproar triggered forcing adjournment. He spoke to both Gandhi and Bansal and could be heard stressing that the opposition has no business to point fingers at the centre, which has given all the money and arms to the state governments to fight the Maoists.

Normalcy was restored in in the post-lunch session but only after Speaker Meira Kumar expunged a word from Sinha's speech to satisfy the Congress members.

The Rajya Sabha also witnessed similar scenes before getting down to discuss the Maoist menace in the post-lunch session.

Arun Jaitley, opposition leader in the Rajya Sabha, as also Sinha in the Lok Sabha harped on the fact that when the 76 CRPF troopers were killed, the entire opposition had come out in full support of the government against the Maoists while differences persisted between the ruling Congress party and the government.

Both cited a signed article of Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh dubbing home minister P Chidambaram as "rigid" and having "intellectual arrogance." They wondered how the government can act effectively when its entire anti-Maoist policy is challenged by a senior office-bearer of the ruling party. Sinha said the government was itself severely divided as one of the UPA elements was opposed to crack down on the Maoists. His hint was towards railway minister and Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Bannerjee.

Congress chief spokesman Janardan Dwivedi countered Jaitley in the Rajya Sabha to assert that an individual's opinion should not be presented as the party's stand. He repeatedly tried to spell out the party stand but the BJP benches shouted him down.

Both the houses began with the opposition demanding suspension of Question Hour to discuss the Dantewada attack. parliamentary affairs mLinister Bansal pleaded in the Lok Sabha to allow Question Hour, stating that Chidambaram will make a statement in the house at 1 pm while his deputy Prithvraj Chavan assured the Rajya Sabha that he will make the statement in the house at 2 pm. The opposition remained adamant, forcing adjournment of both the houses.

The government, however, conceded Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav's suggestion to start the Dantewada debate at noon when the Lok Sabha reassembled, without waiting for the home minister's statement and that was how the debate started. Two adjournments were, however, forced as a majority of the Congress members created pandemonium to block Sinha from speaking further.

Sinha asserted that the government cannot win the war against Maoists unless there is unity of purpose and determination. He pointed out that this was not a small task as he quoted from the home ministry's annual reports to point out that 4,246 lives, including those of security personnel, were lost in the Maoist attacks between 2004 and 2009, which was much larger than those of all wars with Pakistan except in 1971 when 5,300 lives were lost. He went on to cite casualties in other wars with Pakistan as: 1,500 in 1947-49, 3,000 in 1965, and 522 during Kargil conflict.

Jaitley said that the UPA did nothing to crush the Maoists during the first five years of its rule when their area of influence spread to 220 districts, 90 of which are in their effective control. It is only during the past one year or so that the home ministry realised how serious the problem was and that is why the entire opposition, right from BJP to CPI(M), rejected Chidambaram's offer to resign accepting responsibility for the Dantewada episode as they did not want the Maoists to rejoice victory.

Pointing out that the entire opposition is demanding in one voice that the curse of Maoism will have to be eradicated, Jaitley ridiculed Digvijay Singh for suggesting development and other steps instead of the use of the forces to eliminate the ultras. "If satyagraha before Maoists can resolve the issue, we all will join," he said, asking the ruling party not to weave fairy tales like dealing with the problem through development where even the armed security forces are not able to venture in.

Development of the areas can be a long-term solution but that will not be possible if the battle started against Maoists is abandoned just because of Dantewada, Jaitley said while regretting that the home minister appears to be 'gheraoed' by his colleagues in government and party to fight a 'crippled battle.' After the Dantewada setback, Chidambaram wanted to resign because of this handicap, he added.