Political unity against Vice President’s move

Kashmir Times. Dated: 4/26/2013 11:06:55 PM

Dear Editor,
Opposition to welcome move of Vice President to induce discipline during Rajya Sabha proceedings by strictly following rules against unruly members, was on expected lines. Parliamentarians and state-legislators exhibit unusual unity whenever there are moves to discipline them. Argument of opposition that such discipline will provide ruling-alliance dictatorial power to crush voice of dissent is meaningless in democratic form of governance. Was it proper that a handful of members could stall presentation of Women Reservation Bill when a vast majority of members of all major parties supported the Bill? Bitter fact is that such incidents of ‘noora-kushti’ are encouraged by bigger parties by being mute spectator because they exhibit support for such bills only for vote-bank politics without actually wanting to be cleared by Parliament.
Time has come that rules may be re-written to be stringent enough to automatically cancel membership of legislators for such unruly behaviour without requiring any role of Chairpersons/ Parliamentary committees and/or Legislative Assembly/Council etc, which are usually unduly soft on unruly activities of legislators. Rather Parliamentary privilege should be abolished by making proceedings of the House accountable to normal law of land. It becomes even more necessary when documents relating to scams like 2-G otherwise accessible under RTI Act, are denied under Parliamentary privilege only because matter goes before Parliamentary committees. Is it not an indirect strategy to check further revealing on scams by setting Parliamentary committees on corrupt deeds? It is to be remembered that Supreme Court acquitted Parliamentarians involved in infamous JMM bribery case only because their act of voting by being bribed was considered immunised under Parliamentary privilege.
—Subhash Chandra Agrawal,
1775 Kucha Lattushah Dariba,
Chandni Chowk,Delhi.

 

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