Telegraph
India: New Delhi: Tuesday, September 03, 2019.
During
the budget session, which lasted from June 17 to August 7, the Lok Sabha
recorded a productivity of 137 per cent. The session was considered to be the
most productive in the last 20 years. According to PRS Legislative Research, 30
bills were passed by Parliament; the figure is the highest in the last 10
years. However, none of the bills introduced in this session was referred to a
committee.
The
argument in favour of ‘productivity’ must be re-examined. The glaring fallacy
in this argument is the metric being used to evaluate Parliament’s
productivity. Prioritizing the volume of legislations over their quality and
their referral to standing committees eviscerates the deliberative nature of
parliamentary democracy. According to PRS Legislative Research, in the 16th Lok
Sabha, 25 per cent of the bills introduced were referred to committees, much
lower than the figures of 71 per cent and 60 per cent in the 15th and 14th Lok
Sabhas, respectively. None of the bills in the 17th Lok Sabha, including the
one amending the Right to Information Act and the Muslim women (protection of
rights on marriage) bill, was sent to standing committees. The use of standing
committees augments the quality of legislations in two ways. First, since
committee members are not obligated to toe the line of party whips, they act
rationally. Second, the views of experts from academia and civil society are
included while dealing with intricate issues.
There
has been a general decline in the number of days of sitting for Parliament. The
16th Lok Sabha sat for 331 days, fewer than the average of 468 days. Squeezing
higher productivity from lesser number of days results in bulldozing important
legislations without the necessary checks and balances. The finance bill was
passed within 30 minutes of its introduction, highlighting the perils of a
brute majority for an elected dispensation.
The
passage of the RTI amendment bill also exposed some of the deficiencies of
Parliament. Bhartruhari Mahtab of the Biju Janata Dal had opposed the
amendments vigorously. Similarly, in the Rajya Sabha, Prasanna Acharya, a BJD MP,
supported the motion tabled by Derek O’Brien (TMC) and Binoy Viswam (CPI) to
refer the bill to the select committee of Rajya Sabha. The motion was
subsequently negated and the bill passed amidst a walkout by the Congress, the
Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Trinamul Congress.
What
compels parliamentarians to flock towards a single decision? The answer lies in
the infamous anti-defection law, which makes legislators slaves to the party
whip. Therefore, the Bharatiya Janata Party government only had to convince the
BJD leadership without taking all its MPs into confidence. Once the leadership
was persuaded, individual MPs were coerced to vote according to the whip.
That
is not all. According to the Pre-legislative Consultation Policy, 2014, it is
mandatory for a draft bill to be placed in the public domain for 30 days for
scrutiny and feedback. This rule was violated as the text of the RTI bill was
made public a day before its introduction. Ironically, Section 4(c) of the RTI
Act mandates the publication of “all relevant facts while formulating important
policies or announcing the decisions which affect [the] public”. The alleged
partisanship of the Speaker, the anti-defection law, the absence of scrutiny of
bills by committees, an enfeebled Opposition these are a few of the abhorrent
conditions that seem to be weakening representative democracy.
.JPG)
.JPG)
