Pepper trouble

Parliament's presiding officers cannot escape their responsibility

Proceedings in India's highest lawmaking body hit a new low on Thursday when the anti-Telangana member of the Lok Sabha for Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, Lagadapati Rajagopal, stormed into the well of the House and sprayed pepper spray all around. He later said that he was only acting out of self-defence, but his action disrupted the tabling of the Bill that will begin the process of the formation of a separate state of Telangana. Mr Rajagopal, one of the richest parliamentarians, is a promoter of the Lanco group, which has several power projects as well as significant construction and real estate interests in Hyderabad, which is to be part of Telangana. While Mr Rajagopal, one of the six members of the Congress Parliamentary Party who were expelled earlier this week for disruption and submitting a no-confidence motion against the government, was the worst offender, he was not alone. A member of the Telugu Desam Party, M Venugopal, was accused by various Congress parliamentarians of having brandished a knife; he subsequently claimed that he was only carrying around a microphone that he had broken. In the chaos, it was not even clear if the Bill had finally been introduced, with Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath claiming it had been.

This deeply worrying scene follows an unprecedented disruption of the Railway Budget on Wednesday. A culture of disruption has taken hold to such a degree that now the basic security of the House is not guaranteed. Remember, members of the House are not subject to standard security procedures, including frisking for knives and so on, when they enter the premises. This tradition of exemption, routinely misused outside Parliament, is now being misused within Parliament, too. Pepper spray, after all, can be used as a weapon. It is banned for use on battlefields under chemical weapons conventions. But, apparently, nothing prevents a parliamentarian from carrying it into the Lok Sabha and using it.

The deteriorating standards of behaviour in Parliament have gone from bad to worse. India now faces the very real possibility that the vote-on-account will be disrupted on Monday. Further, the personal safety of parliamentarians could also be in jeopardy. The presiding officers must now recognise their culpability in this state of affairs. By refusing to let marshals do their job and impose order in the House, they have enabled the worst sort of behaviour. Suspensions after the fact do not help. A structural change is needed. The Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Deputy Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha must sit and work out what needs to change. Can the no-security regime for parliamentarians endure in this changed environment? Must there be a zero-tolerance policy for disruption? This Lok Sabha has done less work than any other in history, save the first. An entire legislative agenda of a government has gone abegging, while parliamentarians have set a bad example and have been treated with kid gloves. It is time for Parliament's own chosen leaders to set this right.