It's time to stop unruly scenes and wastage of time in Parliament

12 October, 2012

It refers to RTI response from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Secretariat which clearly mentions about existing rules where chairpersons of respective houses of parliament have enough power to practically stop parliamentarians from unruly scenes, including entering well of the House.

IT IS evident that chairpersons usually never exercise power to prevent criminal wastage of public-funds through washed out parliamentary sessions. 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 2G, otherwise accessible under RTI Act, are denied under parliamentary privilege only because matter goes before parliamentary committees.

It is 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.