Seventeen Opposition parties, in a letter to Vice-President and Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu, have accused the government of “hurriedly passing” legislations without any parliamentary scrutiny.
Seeking protection from Mr. Naidu, the letter said, “While we understand our responsibility and the need to enact legislation, any attempt by the Government to undermine the privileges of members, the Rules and established conventions will diminish the role of the Council of States as envisaged by our founding fathers.”
The letter has been signed by leader of Opposition and Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, Trinamool Congress leader Derek O' Brien, Ramgopal Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, ‘Tiruchi’ Siva of the Dravida Munnetra Kazgham, Majeed Memon of the Nationalist Congress Party, T.K. Rangarajan of the CPI(M), Manoj Jha of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Satish Chandra Mishra of the Bahujan Samaj Party, K. Ravindra Kumar of the Telugu Desam Party, Sanjay Singh of the Aam Aadmi Party, Binoy Viswam of the CPI and Vaiko of the MDMK.
The other signatories include the Janata Dal (Secular), IUML, PDP and the Kerala Congress (Mani). Significantly, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi's Keshav Rao too has signed the letter. The party, after backing the demand to send the Right to Information (amendment) Bill 2019, backed out at the last minute on Thursday, leading to the defeat of the Opposition motion.
The letter said that in the 14th Lok Sabha, 60 per cent of the Bills were referred to parliamentary committees. In the next one, 71 per cent of the Bills went to the committees. But this figure came drastically down in the 16th Lok Sabha when the Narendra Modi-led government came to power first, with only 26% of Bills being sent for scrutiny.
In the first session of the 17th Lok Sabha, 14 Bills have been passed in the first session but not a single one was sent to House committees. “Public consultation is a long established practice where parliamentary committees scrutinise Bills, deliberate, engage and work towards improving the content and quality of the legislation,” the letter said.
The signatories pointed out that the Opposition parties were not given sufficient time to study legislation, seek amendments or ask questions. The letter elaborated the instance of legislation of “The Protection of Human Rights (Amendment) Bill, 2019. This Bill was laid on the Rajya Sabha table at 5:01 p.m. on Friday to be debated on the next working day, Monday, July 22. The letter, quoting the rule book, said the members were entitled to have at least one working day's time to file amendment notices.
Session extension
The parties also rued the extension of session, saying the first session of every Lok Sabha had on average of only 10 sittings. This session that began on June 17 was scheduled to end on July 26 has now been extended to August 7.
Mr. Vishwam in a separate communication addressed to both the Lok Sabha Speaker and Rajya Sabha Chairman lodged protested against Parliament session extension and bypassing of the standing committee route.
