A day after no action was taken against the Samajwadi Party MPs , who snatched a copy of the ‘Reservation in Quota Promotion Bill’ from Minister V. Narayanasamy in the Lok Sabha and tore it up, RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal has argued that Parliament rules demand “stricter punishment”.
He said this “unparliamentarily” incident took place after an earlier incident last year in the Rajya Sabha where Rajya Sabha chairperson overlooked how Rajniti Prasad of the RJD tore the Lokpal Bill on December 31 last year .
Citing the RTI reply from the Rajya Sabha which talked about “suspension” of a member for “disregarding the authority of the chair…by persistently and wilfully obstructing the business of the house”, he said despite rules being there to act against such unruly behaviour of Parliamentarians, chairpersons usually avoid acting against such members.
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“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, which are usually unduly soft on unruly activities of legislators,” added Mr. Agrawal, demanding Parliamentary privilege be abolished by making proceedings of the House accountable to normal law of land. Arguing that the concept of Parliamentary privileges has only checked exposure of corruption, he referred to the fact that Supreme Court acquitted Parliamentarians involved in the infamous JMM bribery case only because their act of voting by being bribed was considered immunised under Parliamentary privilege.