In our Parliamentary system of government, the Prime
Minister is the Head of the Government. He is the leader of the House of the
People (Lok Sabha). The Article 75(3) of the Constitution says that “the Council
of Ministers shall be collectively responsible to the House of the People.” And
the Article 75(2) ensures the individual responsibility of a Minister. Thus, the
Ministers and the Prime Minister are individually and collectively answerable, for
their acts of omission and commission, to the Lok Sabha that represents the
sovereign will of the people.
On 13 December,2023- the 22nd anniversary
of the 2001 terror attack on Parliament-two men- Sagar Sharma and D. Manoranjan-
entered the Lok Sabha, jumped down into the Central Hall from the visitors’
gallery and opened colored gas canisters, engulfing the House in thick yellow
plumes and triggering panic among MPs, in what is construed as the most serious
security breach ever. Imagine if they carried poisonous gas, bombs and grenades.
Their entry was facilitated by the BJP MP from Mysuru, Prathap Simha. Two others-Neelam Verma and Amol Shinde- stood
outside, raising slogans and spraying gas from canisters. In all, six persons, members
of the Bhagat Singh Fan Club, had planned the attack on the Parliament. They
were frustrated unemployed young people, ventilating anger against the
government. This security breach in Parliament, supposed to be the most secured place, reflects failure of the Modi government.
In such a serious situation, it is a common practice
for the concerned Minister to make a statement in the House apprising the
members of the development, which is a constitutional obligation. Hene it was expected
that Amit Shah, Home Minister in- charge of security, would come to the House
next day morning and make a suo motu statement apprising the members about the incident
or alternatively the Prime Minister Narendra Modi- the Leader of the House- to
make a statement. In December 2001, when the Parliament House was attacked,
Home Minister L.K. Advani made a statement. However, both Amit Shan and
Narendra Modi chose not to be present in the House when it assembled on 14th
morning, making light of the incident, leave alone making a statement. It is an
insult to the Parliament. This made the opposition members agitated. They demanded
the Home Minister should come to the House and make a statement, which is legitimate
in a parliamentary democracy.
And both Amit Shah and Narendra Modi preferred to speak on the issue in an interview to a TV channel and at an event, when
the House was in session, and refused to attend the Parliament and make any
statement on the incident on the floor of the House. It is so contemptuous.
This has resulted in ruckus in both the Houses of Parliament, giving rise to acrimony
and disorder, with the united opposition relentlessly demanding statement from
the Home Minister.
The Presiding Officers made no effort to persuade the
Home Minister to respond to the demand of the opposition. As the impartial neutral umpires and the
custodians of the rights of members, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha Om Birla and
the Chairman of the Council of States (Rajya Sabha) Jagdeep Dhankhar were duty bound
to defuse the situation, by taking dispassionate view, and, instead, they acted
in a very partisan manner in connivance with the treasury benches, particularly
the Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prahlad Joshi and the leader of the House in
Rajya Sabha Piyush Goyal.
They should learn how to conduct themselves from Somnath
Chatterjee who defied his party’s whip to vote for the no- confidence motion against
Manmohan Singh government in 2008 on the issue of nuclear deal with the US and
even invited his expulsion from his party -CPM- rather than compromise his integrity. He took a stand that the Speaker ceased to be
a member of any party and that he is above party politics. He never suspended a single MP from the House,
as he believed that the suspension of MPs was not the right step to restore
order in the Huse.
In an unprecedented, premeditated move, as evident from
the proceedings of the Parliament. the Presiding Officers suspended en masse
146 opposition MPs for ‘disruption’ and ‘persistent and willful obstruction’,
making the opposition mukt Parliament. There is no parallel in the parliamentary
history in the world. It is so shocking and disgraceful that we call ourselves
a ‘mother of democracy.’ Every convention and practice of the parliament is
broken to oust the opposition members from the Parliament so that the government
could pass the crucial bills, particularly the three bills relating to criminal
laws, with far reaching consequences, without any dissent and opposition.
The three criminal laws- the Indian Penal Code (IPC),
the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Evidence Act are replaced
by the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Bhartiya
Sakshya Sanhita respectively. The opposition
request not to rush through such important criminal legislations in haste and
refer them to the Joint Standing Committee of the Parliament for scrutiny is
not conceded. Their suggestion to provide English titles to these Bills, for the
benefit of non-Hindi speaking sates, is also rejected outrightly. Former Home Minister P. Chidambar says these
bills are very contentious and complex, having several loopholes. According to him, more than ninety
percent of the contents of these new proposed criminal Bills are a copy and
paste from the original laws. And some provisions in these bills are more draconian. They were passed without discussion and debate, with the empty opposition benches. The amended criminal laws would
transform India into a police state.
In Britain, every Wednesday for an hour, the PM takes
questions from opposition members impromptu and answers them. Here in India, the two most powerful men
running the country are breaking every parliamentary norm to muzzle the opposition
voice. To them, ‘it is my way or highway.’ Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, as the Leaders of Opposition in Rajya
Sabha and Lok Sabha, claimed that ‘disruption of proceedings ‘is the legitimate
right of the opposition to draw government attention. And that is how the BJP
in opposition blocked the parliament proceedings for weeks, session after
session, during the UPA regime and had their way. They were not thrown out
of the Parliament.
The present regime has mastered the art of distracting from the main issues and making an issue of a non-issue by resorting to diversionary tactics. Take for instance, the mimicking of Jagdeep Dhankhar, Chairman of Rajya Sabha, by the TMC Leader Kalyan Banerjee in the parliament complex where all the suspended MPs assembled to protest. Jagdeep Dhankhar said that he was mimicked because he was a Jat. Reacting to this, Mallikarjun Kharge-the LoP in Rajya Sabha- asked, in a lighter vein, if his Dalit identity was the reason for his being regularly denied the opportunity to speak in the Upper House.by the Chairman. And the Prime Minister and the Speaker, in a calculated move, reached out to Dhankhar calling it ‘humiliation’ of the Vice President. and 'extended support' to him. This is a well-orchestrated attempt to distract the people's attention from the serious issue of massive suspension of the opposition MPs and its fallout, and instead present Dhankhar as a victim.
President
Draupadi Murmu says she “was dismayed to see the manner in which our
respected Vice President was humiliated.” Her selective ‘dismay’ is surprising.
Why wasn’t she ‘dismayed’ when Rahul Gandhi and Mahua Moitra were expelled from
the Parliament for raising questions on Adani-Modi nexus without even giving them an
opportunity to be heard? Why wasn’t she ‘dismayed’,
when the opposition MPs were ousted en masse from the Parliament, of which she
is the Head? This is not to justify the mimicking. There are umpteen number of
instances where the Prime Minister himself mocked and mimicked Sonia Gandhi, Raul Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee and other opposition leaders, right in Parliament and at public
rallies. This double standard is the root cause of all the evils in the system.
The media is not interested even in commenting
how the Presiding Officers could exercise the power so ruthlessly and suspend practically all opposition MPs,
including the LOPs, for demanding a statement from the Home Minister on the serious
security lapse. Rahul Gandhi wants to know: “why
is there no discussion in the media over opposition MPs being thrown out of the
House.” And no one in the media is questioning either how the ruling party MP facilitated
the entry of intruders into the Lok Sabha and why no action is taken against
him. The three pillars of democracy- the Parliament, the Judiciary and the
Media- have been demolished, paving the way for a dictatorial regime.
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