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The Winter Session of Parliament, the penultimate session of the 17th Lok Sabha, ended a day ahead of schedule on Thursday with the two Houses passing half a dozen Bills on the last day in the absence of most of the Opposition members.
In the Lok Sabha, three more Opposition MPs – Congress’ Nakul Nath, Deepak Baij and DK Suresh - were suspended, taking the total number of such suspensions to 100. During the session, an unprecedented 146 MPs were suspended in the two Houses for “unruly conduct” as they demanded that Union Home Minister Amit Shah make a statement in Parliament on the December 13 security breach. Earlier in the session, the Lok Sabha expelled Trinamool Congress’ Mahua Moitra.
The INDIA bloc MPs on Thursday marched from Parliament to Vijay Chowk, with banners and placards that said ‘Save Democracy’, ‘Parliament Caged’ and ‘Democracy Expelled’ to protest the suspensions.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had violated parliamentary privilege by not speaking on the security breach issue inside the House.
"He (Modi) talks in Varanasi, Ahmedabad, on TV but not in Parliament. They have disrespected the House. He should come and speak in the House first, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Instead of that he was speaking outside. This is condemnable and it was a violation of privilege (of the House)," Kharge said. In a reference to the mimicry issue and Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar's remarks on it, Kharge said, "I am sorry to say that the Rajya Sabha Chairman has in a way brought casteism to Parliament by raising an issue.”
In his remarks at the end of the session, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla said the House held 14 sittings since December 4, worked for 61 hours and 50 minutes, recording productivity of 74 per cent, and passed 18 Bills. In the Rajya Sabha, Dhankhar said 17 Bills were passed during 65 hours of working with 79 per cent productivity.
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On the last day of the session, the Rajya Sabha passed three Bills to replace colonial-era criminal laws, which the Lok Sabha had passed on Wednesday. Parliament also passed the Telecom Bill and a Bill to put in place a mechanism to appoint the Chief Election Commissioners and Election Commissioners.
The Lok Sabha passed the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and Other Election Commissioners (ECs) (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Bill earlier this week. Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said the Bill was consistent with the Supreme Court (SC) order, and the committee mentioned in the apex court judgement – of the prime minister, the leader of the opposition and the Chief Justice of India - was a "stop-gap" arrangement.
Before the SC ruling, the CEC and ECs were appointed by the President on the recommendation of the government.
Once the Bill is notified, the panel headed by the prime minister and comprising a Union minister nominated by the premier and the leader of the opposition, or the leader of the single largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha will select members of the Election Commission. A vacancy will arise in the poll panel when Election Commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey demits office on February 14 next year.
During the debate, Biju Janata Dal’s Bhartruhari Mahtab said the primary focus should not be on the presence of the chief justice of India in the search committee but on ensuring independence of the Election Commission. AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi opposed the Bill, calling it "arbitrary and biased". "If voters start feeling like the ECI is not impartial, the legitimacy of our democracy comes into question," he said.
The Rajya Sabha passed the Telecom Bill after a debate lasting 1 hour and 10 minutes in which Minister Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and seven MPs participated. The Lok Sabha passed the Bill on Wednesday after a debate that lasted an hour, in which 4 MPs took part. On Thursday in the Rajya Sabha, minister Vaishnaw defended the government's move to push major changes in the licensing regime and spectrum management in the Bill. “A significant spectrum reform is being brought which will pull the telecom sector out from the dark ages of corruption and scams like the 2G. Those responsible must answer how they made a pious resource a medium of their corruption,” he said.
The minister stressed similar reforms in the manufacturing space are currently enabling the export of telecom equipment worth over Rs 8,000 crore. The Telecom Bill has cleared the way for the Centre to allocate satellite spectrum and kept over-the-top (OTT) services from its ambit of regulations. It has also retained the powers vested in India’s telecom regulator, and walked back on earlier plans to take away spectrum from insolvent telecom operators.
It has made procurement of SIM cards or other telecommunication identifiers through “fraud, cheating or personation” punishable with a jail term of up to three years and a fine of up to Rs 50 lakh. Interestingly, the Bill allows the government to take over, manage or suspend any or all telecommunication services or networks in the interest of national security.
