Deccan Herald: Opinion: Sunday, 14 June 2026.
Last week, Hungary’s MPs
unanimously approved legislation to drastically reduce their salaries and
allowances. Barely a month after being sworn in, Prime Minister Peter Magyar
delivered on this electoral promise. While the MPs will be paid 40 per cent lesser
than before, the PM’s pay will be cut by more than half. European media have
calculated that his predecessor was earning almost 13 times more than the
average national wage.
This side of the Danube, a day after PM Magyar assumed office, we were advised to adopt austerity measures to conserve forex reserves that are depleting rapidly due to the economic hardships arising from the United States-Israel-Iran conflict. We must resume working from home, avoid unnecessary foreign travel, use public transport, buy gold sparingly, limit the use of fertilisers, and even reduce our consumption of cooking oil. Soon came the indispensable tour of five countries. Will our ministers and MPs, 90% of whom are self-declared crorepatis, “tighten de belten” (like Chaplin’s Great Dictator demanded sacrifices from his people in the fictional country of Tomania) to lead by example? This is a question hardly anyone has asked publicly.
Forget emulating such good practices from the European Union, with whom we have the ‘mother of all trade deals’, the distance between our Parliament and us is increasingly widening. First, not too long ago, the majority of MPs voted to erase the parity between them and us for accessing official information through the RTI when they passed the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act. Now, the Parliament’s secretariats are telling us we do not have the right to know the details of the recently rejected attempts to impeach the current Chief Election Commissioner.
Despite widespread media reporting on the twin notices of the impeachment motion submitted by the Opposition MPs, in March this year, nobody outside Parliament seems to have actually seen their contents. After it was publicly announced in April that the Lok Sabha Speaker and the Rajya Sabha Chairman had rejected these notices, I submitted two identical RTI applications to the respective secretariats.
I sought copies of the notices of motion submitted, the rejection orders issued by the respective heads of the Houses, the name and designation of all persons they consulted as required under Section 3(1) of The Judges Inquiry Act (which applies in this case), the opinions they received, the text of the materials consulted by the Speaker and the Chairman as required by the procedure laid down, and all correspondence and file notings generated during the decision-making process. The respective public information officers merely replied that none of this information can be disclosed under Section 8(1)(c) of the RTI Act. Neither of them signed their replies.
The exemption clause they invoked is crafted to prevent information disclosure from causing “a breach of privilege of Parliament or the State Legislature.” It is the least frequently used ground for rejecting RTI applications. The Union ministries used it only 39 times in 2024-25. Neither House Secretariat used it even once, according to their annual implementation reports.
Articles 105(2) and 194(2) of our Constitution immunise our MPs, MLAs, and MLCs from criminal liability for words spoken or votes given in the legislature or in its committees. According to Kaul and Shakder’s compendium of parliamentary practice and procedure, successive committees on privileges and committees of speakers have held that these and other privileges are granted to them for performing their appointed duties without hindrance. These privileges do not place them on a footing different from that of ordinary citizens vis-à-vis the application of any law. The fundamental principle is that all citizens, including MPs, must be treated equally in the eyes of the law unless there are sufficient reasons in the interest of Parliament itself to do otherwise. MPs cannot claim any privilege higher than those enjoyed by the people who elect them.
Given this foundational philosophy of parliamentary privileges, how does the disclosure of information sought through RTI hurt Parliament’s interests or prevent MPs from doing their job? The matter relating to this batch of impeachment motion notices is complete because they stand rejected. Whose vested interests are being protected now?
We elect our MPs and annually finance the expenditure incurred by Parliament and the Election Commission. Yet, babus are claiming that records on the allegations levelled against the head of the entity conducting those very elections are sarkari secrets! This is the latest irony in the world’s largest democracy.
(The writer wakes up every morning thinking someone somewhere is hiding something.)
This side of the Danube, a day after PM Magyar assumed office, we were advised to adopt austerity measures to conserve forex reserves that are depleting rapidly due to the economic hardships arising from the United States-Israel-Iran conflict. We must resume working from home, avoid unnecessary foreign travel, use public transport, buy gold sparingly, limit the use of fertilisers, and even reduce our consumption of cooking oil. Soon came the indispensable tour of five countries. Will our ministers and MPs, 90% of whom are self-declared crorepatis, “tighten de belten” (like Chaplin’s Great Dictator demanded sacrifices from his people in the fictional country of Tomania) to lead by example? This is a question hardly anyone has asked publicly.
Forget emulating such good practices from the European Union, with whom we have the ‘mother of all trade deals’, the distance between our Parliament and us is increasingly widening. First, not too long ago, the majority of MPs voted to erase the parity between them and us for accessing official information through the RTI when they passed the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act. Now, the Parliament’s secretariats are telling us we do not have the right to know the details of the recently rejected attempts to impeach the current Chief Election Commissioner.
Despite widespread media reporting on the twin notices of the impeachment motion submitted by the Opposition MPs, in March this year, nobody outside Parliament seems to have actually seen their contents. After it was publicly announced in April that the Lok Sabha Speaker and the Rajya Sabha Chairman had rejected these notices, I submitted two identical RTI applications to the respective secretariats.
I sought copies of the notices of motion submitted, the rejection orders issued by the respective heads of the Houses, the name and designation of all persons they consulted as required under Section 3(1) of The Judges Inquiry Act (which applies in this case), the opinions they received, the text of the materials consulted by the Speaker and the Chairman as required by the procedure laid down, and all correspondence and file notings generated during the decision-making process. The respective public information officers merely replied that none of this information can be disclosed under Section 8(1)(c) of the RTI Act. Neither of them signed their replies.
The exemption clause they invoked is crafted to prevent information disclosure from causing “a breach of privilege of Parliament or the State Legislature.” It is the least frequently used ground for rejecting RTI applications. The Union ministries used it only 39 times in 2024-25. Neither House Secretariat used it even once, according to their annual implementation reports.
Articles 105(2) and 194(2) of our Constitution immunise our MPs, MLAs, and MLCs from criminal liability for words spoken or votes given in the legislature or in its committees. According to Kaul and Shakder’s compendium of parliamentary practice and procedure, successive committees on privileges and committees of speakers have held that these and other privileges are granted to them for performing their appointed duties without hindrance. These privileges do not place them on a footing different from that of ordinary citizens vis-à-vis the application of any law. The fundamental principle is that all citizens, including MPs, must be treated equally in the eyes of the law unless there are sufficient reasons in the interest of Parliament itself to do otherwise. MPs cannot claim any privilege higher than those enjoyed by the people who elect them.
Given this foundational philosophy of parliamentary privileges, how does the disclosure of information sought through RTI hurt Parliament’s interests or prevent MPs from doing their job? The matter relating to this batch of impeachment motion notices is complete because they stand rejected. Whose vested interests are being protected now?
We elect our MPs and annually finance the expenditure incurred by Parliament and the Election Commission. Yet, babus are claiming that records on the allegations levelled against the head of the entity conducting those very elections are sarkari secrets! This is the latest irony in the world’s largest democracy.
(The writer wakes up every morning thinking someone somewhere is hiding something.)
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