A welcome respite

Parliament disappointed in 2017 despite the passage of key bills

In the immediate aftermath of a bitterly fought Gujarat Assembly election as well as the 2G case verdict, there were growing worries of a complete washout of the winter session of Parliament. Thankfully, the evidence of the past couple of days shows that the two main political parties are getting down to business, notwithstanding the sharp differences over the Triple Talaq Bill, which eventually was passed by the Lok Sabha late on Thursday. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which was heavily criticised for insinuating that former prime minister Manmohan Singh and former vice-president Hamid Ansari were involved with Pakistan to upstage the government in Gujarat, took the lead to clarify that it had no intention of questioning the commitment of Mr Singh and Mr Ansari to the nation. On its part, the Congress, too, dissociated itself from comments made by a party member that hurt the dignity of the Prime Minister’s Office. Bridging of the chasm between these two parties is crucial because it allows Parliament to enforce legislative accountability on the executive.

Though this conciliatory mood has come too late in the day as far as this year is concerned, it will, hopefully, endure in the remaining days of the current Lok Sabha. This is required as 2017 has been quite a poor year in terms of the total number of days on which Parliament functioned. According to an analysis by PRS Legislative Research, by the end of this month, Parliament would have worked for just 57 days. That is well short of the 70-day mark, the annual average since the year 2000. Though the analysis says that despite meeting on fewer occasions, Parliament did manage to pass a lot of crucial bills, clearing key legislation is just one side of the story. The worrisome aspect is that the trend of disruption that started in 2010 continues unabated in both Houses of Parliament.

The year had started well with the Lok Sabha working for 108 per cent and the Rajya Sabha for 86 per cent of their scheduled time in the budget session. But these percentages fell sharply during the monsoon and winter sessions to as low as 36 per cent for the Rajya Sabha in the ongoing session. An associated worry is an alarming decline in the role of parliamentary committees in scrutinising legislation. Some of the key bills were passed without adequate legislative examination. In fact, the record of the 16th Lok Sabha is shockingly poor — less than 30 per cent of the bills have been scrutinised by the standing committees. The corresponding figures for the 15th and 14th Lok Sabha are 70 per cent and 60 per cent, respectively. In the coming year, Parliament has some important legislation on its agenda — such as the Code on Wages Bill, 2017, which seeks to consolidate laws related to wages, as well as a bill on protecting personal data, especially Aadhaar-related information. It will be in India’s long-term interest if the two main political parties undertake some serious introspection on their parliamentary duties, despite the electioneering in eight states due next year.