Voice votes taken 200 times during passage of CA Bill in Rajya Sabha

Rajya Sabha saw voice votes being taken a whopping 200 times for the passage of a bill on Tuesday as the House gave clause by clause approval, reflecting the procedural rigours involved in enacting legislation.

The debate on the Chartered Accountants, the Cost and Works Accountants and the Company Secretaries (Amendment) Bill, 2022 including the reply of the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman took about two hours and twenty minutes.

However, the process of voting on the 106 clauses and clause-wise amendments took over 30 minutes, Rajya Sabha officials said.

According to RS Secretariat officials, it was after a long time that a bill with so many clauses and amendments was passed with voting taking substantial time.

Procedurally, each clause, if amendments are moved, is required to be put to vote twice based on the number of members moving amendments to each clause.

CPI-M member John Brittas gave 163 notices for amendments to various clauses in the Bill and moved almost all of them during the clause-wise consideration of the Bill. CPI's Binoy Viswam also moved a few other amendments.

Since all amendments are required to be put to vote of the House, voice votes were taken over 200 times before the passage of the Bill, a statement of the Rajya Sabha secretariat said.

The vocal cords of Deputy Chairman Harivansh were also put to a severe test while reading out the clauses, the number of amendments moved to each clause along with the names of members moving the amendments and putting the clauses and amendments to the vote.

The bill seeks to revamp the functioning of the institutes of chartered accountants, cost accountants and company secretaries.