Author: George Fernandes
Publication: The Statesman
Date: November 25, 2001
Introduction: Can Parliament be
relevant if basic civility is flagrantly violated? Rules of conduct need
to be enforced for the dignity and majesty of the institution to be salvaged.
Is India's Parliament which represents
the collective will of a billion Indians becoming an irrelevant institution
or is it degenerating into another state assembly of Bihar where rules
are meant to be broken and the well of the House is treated as a wrestling
ring?
It is now common knowledge that
visitors to Parliament who watch the proceedings from the visitors' galleries
go away in utter disgust at the way parliamentarians conduct themselves
in the House. If the older generation displays its disgust, the school
and college-going children who come to the sanctum of our democracy with
great awe and greater expectations leave the precincts of the House with
a wholly lopsided idea of what parliamentary democracy is all about. If
they should come to believe that this is what our democracy is, then there
can be no great future for our parliamentary system of governance.
When the proposal for live telecast
of Parliament proceedings was first mooted some years ago, there were two
differing views expressed by the members. One section felt that live telecast
will contribute to better debates and sobriety in the House, with members
upholding its dignity and decorum. The other section was of the view that
live telecast will provide an incentive to perform to the galleries - not
of the House, but in their distant constituencies, the target audience
being those who elected the members.
Time has demonstrated that the skeptics
were right. Televising Parliament proceedings has indeed contributed to
making Parliament a place where debate is at a discount and slanging matches
between ruling and opposition benches and often between two or more parties
have become common. While members indulge in a demonstration of their lung
power and block the proceedings to tell the folks back home what a valiant
fight they are waging on their behalf, ministers, ever-eager to get a little
more exposure on the idiot boxes across the country, indulge in long-winded
replies to questions by members during Question Hour and while responding
to debates.
Pretentious leaders and pretenders
to the Prime Minister's chair think it is their duty to ask their flock
to rush into the well of the House and, worse still, to surround the Chair
of the Speaker of the House in pursuit of whatever public or private agendas
they may have to put on display. That they themselves sit back in their
seats and watch their flock perform indicates that either they are aware
that what they have asked their members to do is wrong and hence are ashamed
to participate in it, or they think that they are superior characters and
cannot be part of a shouting brigade. That all this makes a mockery of
the rules of conduct in the House and lowers its dignity is not their concern.
Is there no way to deal with those
indulging in such wayward and irresponsible behaviour? Of course, there
is. Just enforce the rules relating to the conduct of the members. The
1215 page book, Practice and Procedure of Parliament by MN Kaul and SL
Shakdher, from whose pages several members quote copiously whenever any
knotty question has to be dealt with, and by which they swear to make their
point when in doubt or to reject the argument of the other side, has more
than one chapter to deal with members who do not observe the rules when
they are present in the House. These rules provide for suspension from
the House for a specific period as well as for permanent expulsion.
Why successive presiding officers
have chosen not to use these rules and thereby prevent members and their
so-called leaders from making a mockery of the House and in the process
lowering its dignity is an obvious question. The only equally obvious answer
would be that in a nation where all laws and rules are thrown to the winds,
it may be too much to expect that they will be observed in Parliament.
If that would be the likely explanation, then it is all the more necessary
that Parliamentarians who enjoy the sobriquet of 'law makers' better be
ordered to obey the rules and laws that govern their conduct inside the
House and outside. It is only then that they will acquire the moral authority
to frame the laws of the land and enforce them. One reason the much-spoken
of corruption in public life in our country keeps growing is the failure
of our law makers to live by the laws they have framed.
Another factor which points in the
direction of Parliament becoming irrelevant is the gradual reduction, over
a period of time, of its working days. From a record sitting for 151 days
in 1956, the Lok Sabha touched the nadir in 1999 when it sat for only 51
days. And when one looks at the time spent on blocking the work of the
House over some trivial issues, which situation was not there till the
Fourth Lok Sabha, it does not require much imagination to realise how our
elected representatives also known as our law makers, have succeeded in
making our Parliament irrelevant.
A point may be made here that following
the setting up of the Standing Committees for each of the Ministries, and
these Committees meeting at regular intervals, a reduction in the working
days of Parliament was inevitable. Meetings of the Standing Committees
cannot be a substitute for sittings of the House. The question Hour, Calling
Attention Motions, Half-an-hour discussions are the members' prerogatives.
Reduction in working days deprives the members of these effective tools
of parliamentary action, and denies them opportunities to expose the government's
wrong doings. On days of Standing Committee meetings, Parliament should
meet from say 9.00 am to 1.00 pm, with the afternoon and evening being
set aside for the Committees.
In the just concluded monsoon session,
there has been some movement in the direction of enforcing discipline on
the members of the House. Going by past experience, it is doubtful whether
it will have any effect when the House meets for the winter session in
November. Unless the rules of conduct are strictly enforced, the chances
are that there will be further deterioration in members' behaviour, and
we may reach a stage when there will be nothing left to retrieve. Only
when the following three paragraphs from Practice and Procedure of Parliament
are observed in practice, parliamentarians will learn what discipline and
decorum is: "The House has the right to punish its members for their misconduct.
It exercises its jurisdiction of scrutiny over its members for their conduct
whether it takes place inside or outside the House. It has also the power
to punish its members for disorderly conduct and other contempts, whether
committed within the House or beyond its walls. In the case of misconduct
or contempts committed by its members, the House can impose these punishments:
admonition, reprimand, withdrawal from the House, suspension from the service
of the House, imprisonment and expulsion from the House.
"If at any stage, the Chair is of
the opinion that the conduct of a member is grossly disorderly, the member
may be directed to withdraw immediately from the House. A member, who disregards
the authority of the Chair or abuses the rules of the House by persistent
and wilful obstruction of the business before the House, may be named by
the Chair and later suspended from the service of the House on a motion
moved by a member and adopted by the House. The purpose of 'expulsion'
is to rid the House of persons who are unfit for its membership." It now
lies in the hands of the Speaker of the House to enforce every rule in
the book and restore to Parliament the majesty and dignity without which
its authority, such as is left of it, will also be stripped from it.
(The author is Minister of Defence,
Government of India.)
