Legislators should be disqualified for unruly behaviour

06 September, 2012

This refers to Wednesday's scuffle during Rajya Sabha proceedings between members Naresh Agrawal (SP) and Avtar Singh Karimpuri (BSP), which was mutely witnessed by the Chair without taking any action against the erring parliamentarians.

DESPITE THE rules to act against such unruly behaviour, chairpersons usually avoid acting against such members like has also happened earlier when no action was taken against Rajniti Prasad for tearing copy of Lokpal Bill during Rajya Sabha proceedings.

Time has come to re-write the rules and make them 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 towards unruly activities of legislators.

Rather parliamentary privilege should be abolished by making proceedings of the House accountable to normal law of the 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.

Is it not an indirect strategy to stop further revealing of 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.