The winter session of Parliament falls just short of a washout

Though both Houses were adjourned several times during the day, some business did get done. The Lok Sabha saw introduction of nine new Bills

The winter session of Parliament is rounding up to a close. But disruption isn’t.

In an extraordinary warning, with five days for the session to end, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla told Opposition leaders who were in the well of the House, carrying placards: “Members, remember! If there is any damage to the property of the Lok Sabha, it is on your own heads. You will be held responsible if any fixtures in this house are damaged.”

Fixtures? Damage?

This session will likely go down in recent history as the worst one for Government-Opposition relations. The reason? Disruption and unparalleled bitterness in relations between the ruling party and the Opposition. Twelve Rajya Sabha MPs could not attend any part of the session because they were suspended for their behaviour in the monsoon session, the previous one. The Opposition continues to believe this action on the part of the chairman, M Venkaiah Naidu, was illegal.

“The apparent reason behind the Government-Opposition standoff is the suspension of the MPs in the Rajya Sabha. According to impartial observers, this is not in accordance with the rules. The perception is that people are being punished by acting outside the rules. Obviously there will be anger. And they will exhibit the anger in the House. There is a degree of helplessness in the Opposition. The suspended MPs are sitting outside the House. All this can only increase bitterness,” said former Lok Sabha Secretary General PDT Achary.

The Rajya Sabha mood infected the Lok Sabha. As a result, important pieces of legislation like the Ordinance to increase the retiring age of the heads of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was cleared with minimal discussion. Parliamentary proceedings went on as if on a knife’s edge — there was no telling when the House would dissolve into disarray. While the Lok Sabha transacted some business, even if the mood was grudging, the Rajya Sabha was adjourned much of the time. On December 17, a week before the end of the session, it adjourned for the day 19 minutes after it convened.

Former Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha secretariat hands say the Rajya Sabha logjam could have been resolved.

“The presiding officer of the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha has no powers to suspend MPs. It is the House that decides and passes a resolution to that effect. All a presiding officer can do is name the people who should be suspended. This means that the suspension can be revoked if the House moves a resolution to that effect. Any member in the House can move the resolution. The government has to accept it and agree to have a vote on it,” said a former secretariat officer.

Last week, Anand Sharma, deputy leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, did precisely that: Move a resolution seeking to revoke the suspension of the MPs. But oddly, there was no text of the motion. Naidu remarked on this: “I’ve got a motion to revoke the suspensions. But there is no text of the motion. So what do I admit?” In the absence of the text, there was nothing to discuss. And the logjam continued in the Rajya Sabha with both the government and the Opposition complicit in disagreeing to agree. “With disruption being the order of the day in Parliament, I have all the time to attend discussions,” said Minister of State for Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar genially at an event.

“There will be no apology,” said the leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, when asked how business could resume.

However, although both Houses were adjourned several times during the day, some business did get done. The Lok Sabha saw the introduction of nine new Bills. The House discussed Covid-19 and the Omicron variant, and climate change. Some important issues were flagged as Special Mentions. Sivaganga MP Karti Chidambaram said it took a plethora of permissions and compliance certificates to launch an educational institution. But online educational franchises, some with net worth the size of the education Budgets of several small states, needed to pass no compliance standards with respect to the “teachers” on the websites. Shouldn’t this be regulated? Issues regarding surrogacy were discussed heatedly in both Houses. Sonia Gandhi raised in the Lok Sabha the issue of misogyny in the way questions were posed in school examinations. Both Houses debated (briefly) two Ordinances (the farm law repeal Ordinance and the ones to increase the retirement age of the chiefs of the ED and CBI). The Rajya Sabha debated and passed several laws with amendments but the Opposition Benches were empty.

The government is clear that no matter the circumstances, the winter session will not be truncated. The Opposition is equally clear that unless the government agrees to revoke the suspensions, the Rajya Sabha will not work.

“The spirit of honest dialogue and compromise between political parties is vital in deliberative democracy. The events in this session indicate that the chasm between political parties is widening. It will adversely impact the legislative process in the short term and, in the longer term, weaken the spirit of bipartisanship, which is the bedrock of a well-functioning Parliament,” said Chakshu Roy, head of legislative and civic engagement, PRS Legislative Research.
 

The winter session 2021 was certainly a bleak one.