Will the 17th Lok Sabha be very different from the 16th? Chances slim if past five years any indication 

It was a privilege to cover the Indian Parliament over the last few years. It was a great learning experience during a transitional period of Indian politics and when I look back, what strikes me is the one word that was repeated by old-timers, both journalists and MPs, over and over again. The word was ‘unprecedented’, and most of the time it was used with pursed lips and an unbelieving look. A veteran reporter summed it all up when he repeated the BJP slogan, “Mera Desh Badal Raha Hai”.

The government pushed over 40 legislations and amendments -- which were not exactly ‘financial’ in nature -- through the Finance Bill in 2017, which left the opposition fuming. The subterfuge was resorted to clear the Electoral Bonds, damned as opaque by the Election Commission and several former Chief Election Commissioners but introduced by FM Arun Jaitley as a landmark provision to ensure transparency in political funding.

‘Unprecedented’, said several MPs and wondered if the Speaker Sumitra Mahajan had crossed the Lakshman Rekha in allowing the Government to get away by trampling Parliamentary conventions, practices and tradition.

The Money Bill route was also adopted by the government to enact the Aadhaar legislation. How could Aadhaar Bill be a ‘money bill’, the opposition protested in vain.

For the uninitiated, the Rajya Sabha has no say over Money Bills. Its approval is not necessary and amendments suggested by the Upper House are not binding on the Lok Sabha.

The Constitution does define what are Money Bills and what are not. But a third section gives the Speaker the power to decide in case of any ambiguity. Mahajan and the BJP took advantage of this loophole, and the Speaker time and again rejected objections raised by the opposition. With the NDA enjoying an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha but not in the Rajya Sabha, it was convenient to get contentious Bills declared as Money Bills and get them passed, many of them by voice vote, in the Lok Sabha.

Ironically, the Upper House is known as a House of experts, of seasoned politicians, professionals, academics, legal experts and journalists. Members are elected for six years and indirectly by elected members of state Assemblies. But by showing its thumb to the Upper House, the government defied a long cherished parliamentary tradition.

CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury said in Parliament, “Time has come for us to revisit Section 3 of Article 110 of Constitution which gives this right to Speaker of Lok Sabha to decide whether a bill is a money bill or not.” Section 1 defines what is a Money Bill and Section 2 defines what is not.

“But this right does not negate what has been said in 110(1) and 110(2). However, that’s exactly what is happening today. This negation is allowing this sort of subterfuge and smuggling of non-tax proposals and changes into them into the

Finance Bill whereby fundamental issues are going to be amended, enacted, legislated without the opinion and concurrence of this House. This is unconstitutional,” Yechury argued.

Avoiding Parliamentary Committees

The department related parliamentary committees as well as select committees are part of a mechanism evolved to subject legislations to deeper scrutiny as this is not always possible inside the House due to paucity of time and disruptions. The government avoided sending Bills to standing or select committees. During the 16th Lok Sabha, merely 25 per cent of the bills introduced were referred to parliamentary committees, at times even after the opposition’s insistence on the same.

A good example of this is the Muslim Women (protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, or the triple talaq bill. After bulldozing the Bill in the Lok Sabha, the government brought it to the upper House for discussion and passage. The opposition in one voice suggested the Bill to be referred to a select committee comprising MPs from both opposition and the government. The government opposed the proposal tooth and nail and refused to yield even to the demand for voting on the subject. Consequently, the bill collapsed. During UPA-II which immediately preceded the Modi government, over 71 per cent bills were referred to standing committees.

The Ghost Erasers

Several opposition MPs in both Houses discovered that certain words from their speeches inside the House were being deleted without the sanction of the chair.

Participating in the debate on Motion of Thanks to President’s address to both Houses of Parliament, CPM leader Sitaram Yechury said the government was indulging in “deception, disruption, diversion and diabolic agenda”. But the next day he found that the words had been expunged from the proceedings though they were not “unparliamentary”. “Officials told me they had been instructed to expunge the words by the Deputy Chairman. When I asked the Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien, he said he had expunged them from one place only, where these words seemed to be in conjunction with the President’s address and it seemed as if the President had spoken them,” he had explained.

“We had heard of such instances in the Lok Sabha earlier, but this happened in the Rajya Sabha for first time perhaps,” Yechury exclaimed.

Another CPI-M MP in the Lok Sabha, M.B. Rajesh, had a similar experience in 2016. “While raising the issue of police action in JNU last year, I made certain observations about the RSS in the context of freedom struggle of India. Next day, I found that the negative comment about the RSS I had made was not there in the proceedings,” Rajesh, Lok Sabha MP from Palakkad in Kerala, said.

“The Speaker had not asked the remarks to be expunged while I was speaking. When I raised the issue, the Lok Sabha officials told me the remarks were not retained as they were not audible. I asked for the audio clip and found that they were very much audible,” Rajesh said. Notably, all negative references to the RSS used to be diligently expunged.

Former Lok Sabha MP Mohammed Salim recalled that in December 2016, during the winter session, a bill that gave the government power to levy heavy tax on the unexplained income was passed “almost without any discussion”. “We (opposition) protested on the floor that the discussion was not held on the bill, but in the records of the proceedings certain portions making a reference to ‘discussion’ were removed,” he said.

When Rajya Sabha Chair Faced The Ire Of Powers-That-Be

One of the most embarrassing and cringeworthy moments in Parliament was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to bid farewell to then Vice-President and Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, M Hamid Ansari.

Possibly enraged at an interview given by Ansari to Rajya Sabha TV days before demitting office wherein he had said that minorities were feeling insecure in India in the last few years, Modi accused the Vice President of having spent his time “in a certain kind of circle, among the same set of people” his entire professional life and that of viewing things from that “constricted perspective only”.

“You had to remain confined to the Constitution (as the Vice President of India), and you made a good effort. There may have been some struggle within you, but from now onwards, you will not have to face this dilemma. You will have a feeling of freedom, and you will get an opportunity to work, think and speak according to your ideology,” Modi said in his farewell speech to Ansari.

Later, in his book ‘Dare I Question? Reflections on Contemporary Challenges’ published in 2018, Ansari said that the Prime Minister’s remarks at his farewell function were “considered by many to be a departure from accepted practice”. Well, that was a refined way of saying that the Prime Minister had done an unusually terrible thing.

But this was not the only time that the Vice-President, who is the ex-officio Chairman of Rajya Sabha, was snubbed by Modi. On February 8, 2017, while replying to the discussion on the Motion of Thanks to the President’s address, Modi made certain references to the members present in the House at that time. Some of those members, including JD-U leader Sharad Yadav and CPI-M’s Sitaram Yechury tried to intervene but Modi did not yield.

Ansari tried to explain the tradition: “The normal practice to my understanding has been that when a speaker has the floor and somebody wishes to intervene, the person speaking concedes. That has happened very often. That is a known practice.”

Later, when Yechury insisted that he had a right to respond as his and his party’s name had been taken by the Prime Minister, Ansari rued: “All I have to say, Mr. Yechury, is that the established practice of hearing you has not been conceded.” He left the House soon after.

Speaking with mediapersons the next day, Yechury said it was “first time in my memory and perhaps in Parliament’s history” that the Vice-President did not preside over the adoption of Motion of Thanks to the President’s address.

It was during this same address that PM Modi made the disparaging “bathing wearing a raincoat” remark targeting former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who too was present in the House. Again, it is difficult to find any precedence in India’s parliamentary history when a sitting Prime Minister made a personal attack on his predecessor.

“When a person who has held such high offices used the words ‘loot’ and ‘plunder’ in the House (referring to Manmohan Singh’s comment on Demonetisation in the House), he too should have thought 50 times. We have the capacity to pay back in the same coin,” Modi said while justifying his attack deemed to have been in poor taste.

Ordinance Raj

The opposition’s reservations on a given bill hardly ever deterred the Modi government from promulgating or re-promulgating Ordinances multiple times. The Enemy Property and the Triple talaq Ordinances were re-promulgated multiple times even after Parliament had rejected them.

A seven-judge Supreme Court bench headed by the then Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur observed that Ordinances could not be “a parallel source of legislation” and that re-promulgation of Ordinances was “a fraud on the Constitution”. Yet, the Modi Cabinet’s zeal for Ordinances did not die. On February 19 this year, just before going into the elections, the Union Cabinet cleared four Ordinances, including the triple talaq ordinance, which was re-promulgated by President Ram Nath Kovind two days later. There are several instances from the past when the President returned an Ordinance when it was brought by the government just ahead of the elections. But on February 28, the Cabinet cleared five more Ordinances.

In his book ‘Inside Parliament’ released in 2017, Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien observed: “Ordinances often become a convenient and diversionary tool to hide all that the government itself has not achieved, and to mask its failures. Unfortunately, by resorting to them so frequently and reducing them to a political statement rather than what they should be — an emergency provision granted by the Constitution, to be used with care — the government is mocking Parliament.”

Sneaking-in Bills

The contentious Enemy Property Ordinance was re-promulgated by the government multiple times until it succeeded in getting it passed sneakily in the Rajya Sabha on a Friday when opposition MPs were not in the House.

On Fridays, the second half is dedicated to private members’ bills and usually the attendance is thin as most MPs fly back to their home states on the weekend. On such a day, the government brought in the Bill and got it passed. The opposition protested inside the House on the next working day and warned the government not to pass disputed bills behind their back.

Speaking on the issue on March 31, 2017, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said: “When the Enemy Property Bill came up in Business Advisory Committee meeting, it was unanimously decided -- and the government was on board -- that all political parties would sit together and reach a consensus and then only it would be discussed.”

“The decision was over consensus. There was no all-party meeting and the government did not inform us (of the Bill being taken up). The Bill was brought and passed behind the back of opposition MPs,” he added.

PM Eluding Parliament

The opposition was often seen demanding the PM’s presence inside the House during important discussions such as on demonetisation. Modi would usually come to the Rajya Sabha on a Wednesday and sit there in silence for about an hour. He was not seen very frequently in the Lok Sabha either, though during the sessions he would remain inside his office in the Parliament House. Congress MPs recall how former PM Manmohan Singh would sit in the House through entire debates even on issues like 2G case.

As the 17th Lok Sabha meets for the first time, it is hoped, it will be more purposeful and businesslike than the last House.