New Delhi: Parliament was adjourned sine die on Friday, capping off a tumultuous session that saw a robust debate on the country’s constitutional journey and the introduction of two landmark bills on simultaneous elections before plunging to a new low of political animosity over alleged insult of B R Ambedkar.
As Parliament met on the last day of Winter Session, the overhang of mutual bitterness involving the ruling National Democratic Alliance and opposition parties following Thursday’s spat persisted, forcing Speaker Om Birla in Lok Sabha to adjourn the House within three minutes without even the customary summing up of the Session’s highlights.
It was only a little better in Rajya Sabha as opposition parties, which have been protesting against Home Minister Amit Shah’s alleged insulting comments for Ambedkar, agreed to let Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar read out his valedictory remarks before adjourning the House sine die.
The Lok Sabha’s productivity was nearly 58 percent, according to its secretariat, a far cry from days when it hovered around 100 percent and even beyond.
In his concluding remarks, Dhankhar called upon parties to rise above political differences and restore the sanctity of parliamentary discourse, striking a note of balance amid opposition’s charge that he has often been partisan.
He said the House effectively functioned for just 43 hours and 27 minutes with a productivity of merely 40.03 percent during the Winter Session that began on November 25.
At a press conference, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju laid the blame on the door of the opposition, especially the Congress, saying their continuous protest despite an earlier agreement to allow Parliament to run was the principal reason behind the low productivity.
He said all parties must reflect on what is a matter of great concern, adding that as the minister in-charge of parliamentary affairs he will continue to reach out to opposition leaders.
During the Session, five bills were introduced in Lok Sabha, which passed four of them. The Rajya Sabha passed three bills. A special session was also held in the ‘Samvidhan Sadan’ to commemorate the Constitution Day on November 26.
If Thursday’s pushing and shoving involving MPs of rival parties, which left two BJP members hospitalised and led to a police case against Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, was the low point of the Session, a spirited discussion on the “Glorious journey of 75 years of the Constitution of India” for two days in each House reflected the best of parliamentary debate.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s sharp denunciation of the Congress, especially the Nehru-Gandhi family, for its “mutilation” of constitutional values was heard by opposition benches in the Lok Sabha without any serious disruption, and so was Home Minister Amit Shah’s reply to the debate in Rajya Sabha.
However, opposition parties seized on a couple of sentences of Shah’s reply to accuse him of insulting B R Ambedkar, the architect of India’s Constitution, and launched protests inside and outside Parliament.
The BJP-led NDA MPs led counter protests, accusing the Congress of slighting Ambedkar and ignoring his legacy during its long decades in power.
As Modi led Shah’s defence and counterattack on the Congress, both sides turned up political heat, which blew up in an ugly spat on Parliament’s premises on Thursday. Both sides lodged police complaints against each other, and an FIR was registered against Gandhi, blamed by the BJP for injuries to two of its MPs.
Speaker Birla warned all parties against holding protests at the entrance, the site of the spat on Thursday, of Parliament.
Opposition parties have filed notices for breach of privilege against Shah in the two Houses, while the BJP did the same against Rahul Gandhi.
Rijiju told reporters that it is now up to the respective Chair in the two Houses to take a call on the matter.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said his party’s performance in Parliament was “100 percent” as it raised all relevant issues, including the charges in the US against the Adani group, but the government ran away from debate.
Incidentally, it was the government’s readiness to hold a discussion on the Constitution which had broken the early deadlock in Parliament as the Congress stuck to its demand for a debate on the Adani row.
While the opposition INDIA bloc was a divided House with parties like the Samajwadi Party and Trinamool Congress not agreeing with the primacy given to the Adani issue by the Congress, they rallied together over Shah’s comments.
The highlight of the Session’s legislative agenda was two landmark bills — the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Ninth) Amendment Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill — to give effect to the mechanism of simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and assemblies.
It was introduced in Lok Sabha on December 17 and was referred to a 39-member Joint Committee of Parliament on Thursday.
Signaling the deepening divide among different stakeholders in Parliament, opposition parties submitted a notice to move a motion of no-confidence against Dhankhar, but it was dismissed by Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh, who slammed it as an act of impropriety, being severely flawed and drawn in haste to mar the Chairperson’s reputation.
At least 60 opposition members had signed the notice on December 10 for removal of Dhankhar from his post, alleging he was “biased” and they did not have trust in him.
Decks cleared for mega parliamentary panel to examine ONOE bills
Decks were cleared for setting up a mega 39-member parliamentary panel to examine the two bills proposing simultaneous elections with the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha adopting resolutions in this regard.
The government decided to increase the Committee’s strength from 31 to 39 as more political parties expressed the desire to be part of the exercise to examine the two draft legislations that seek to fulfill the BJP’s long-cherished promise of holding simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies.
BJP leader and Lok Sabha member Bhratruhari Mahtab is tipped to be the chairman of the Joint Committee on the ‘One Nation One Election’ (ONOE) bills with former union ministers Anurag Thakur, Parshottam Rupala, P P Chaudhary, Manish Tewari and several first term lawmakers, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Bansuri Swaraj and Sambit Patra, as members.
The Joint Committee to examine the Constitution (129th Amendment) Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill will have 37 members from the Lok Sabha and 12 members from the Rajya Sabha.
Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal moved the resolutions in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha separately amid protests by the opposition on certain parts of Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s remarks on B R Ambedkar.
The two ‘one nation, one election’ (ONOE) bills, including one requiring an amendment in the Constitution, lay down the mechanism to hold simultaneous elections and were introduced in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday after a fiery debate.
“The government agreed that the matter is very important and it relates to the reformation of the election process of our country, so we agreed to include most of the prominent political parties,” Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju told reporters here.
He said there was no limit on the size of the Joint Committee of Parliament and pointed out that one parliamentary panel examining centre-state relations had 51 members.
“The resolutions have been passed by the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha today and the Speaker will issue the formal order of constitution of the Joint Parliamentary Committee,” Rijiju said.
Among the 39 members of the Committee, 16 are from the BJP, five from the Congress, two each from SP, TMC and DMK, and one each from the Shiv Sena, TDP, JD(U), RLD, LJSP(RV), JSP, Shiv Sena-UBT, NCP-SP, CPI(M), AAP, BJD and YSRCP.
The NDA has 22 members and 10 are from the opposition INDIA bloc. The BJD and the YSRCP are not members of the ruling or the opposition coalition. The BJD is yet to spell out its stand on simultaneous polls, while the YSRCP has backed the move.
As per the resolution moved by Meghwal, the Committee has been asked to submit its report to the Lok Sabha by the first day of the last week of the next session.
However, considering the importance of the measure, the Committee could get extension in tenure as required.
