New Delhi: Parliament was adjourned sine die on Friday, capping off a tumultuous session that saw a robust debate on the country’s constitutional journey and the introduction of two landmark bills on simultaneous elections before plunging to a new low of political animosity over alleged insult of B R Ambedkar.
As Parliament met on the last day of Winter Session, the overhang of mutual bitterness involving the ruling National Democratic Alliance and opposition parties following Thursday’s spat persisted, forcing Speaker Om Birla in Lok Sabha to adjourn the House within three minutes without even the customary summing up of the Session’s highlights.
It was only a little better in Rajya Sabha as opposition parties, which have been protesting against Home Minister Amit Shah’s alleged insulting comments for Ambedkar, agreed to let Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar read out his valedictory remarks before adjourning the House sine die.
The Lok Sabha’s productivity was nearly 58 per cent, according to its secretariat, a far cry from days when it hovered around 100 per cent and even beyond.
In his concluding remarks, Dhankhar called upon parties to rise above political differences and restore the sanctity of parliamentary discourse, striking a note of balance amid opposition’s charge that he has often been partisan.
He said the House effectively functioned for just 43 hours and 27 minutes with a productivity of merely 40.03 percent during the Winter Session that began on November 25.
At a press conference, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju laid the blame on the door of opposition, especially the Congress, saying their continuous protest despite an earlier agreement to allow Parliament to run was the principal reason behind the low productivity.
He said all parties must reflect on what is a matter of great concern, adding that as the minister in-charge of parliamentary affairs he will continue to reach out to opposition leaders.
During the Session, five bills were introduced in Lok Sabha, which passed four of them. The Rajya Sabha passed three bills. A special session was also held in the ‘Samvidhan Sadan’ to commemorate the Constitution Day on November 26.
If Thursday’s pushing and shoving involving MPs of rival parties, which left two BJP members hospitalised and led to a police case against Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, was the low point of the Session, a spirited discussion on the “Glorious journey of 75 years of the Constitution of India” for two days in each House reflected the best of parliamentary debate.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s sharp denunciation of the Congress, especially the Nehru-Gandhi family, for its “mutilation” of constitutional values was heard by opposition benches in the Lok Sabha without any serious disruption, and so was Home Minister Amit Shah’s reply to the debate in Rajya Sabha.
However, opposition parties seized on a couple of sentences of Shah’s reply to accuse him of insulting B R Ambedkar, the architect of India’s Constitution, and launch protests inside and outside Parliament.
The BJP-led NDA MPs led counter protests, accusing the Congress of slighting Ambedkar and ignoring his legacy during its long decades in power.
As Modi led Shah’s defence and counterattack on the Congress, both sides turned up political heat, which blew up in an ugly spat on Parliament’s premises on Thursday. Both sides lodged police complaints against each other, and an FIR was registered against Gandhi, blamed by the BJP for injuries to two of its MPs.
Speaker Birla warned all parties against holding protests at the entrance, the site of the spat on Thursday, of Parliament.
Opposition parties have filed notices for breach of privilege against Shah in the two Houses, while the BJP did the same against Rahul Gandhi.
Rijiju told reporters that it is now up to the respective Chair in the two Houses to take a call on the matter.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said his party’s performance in Parliament was “100 per cent” as it raised all relevant issues, including the charges in the US against the Adani group, but the government ran away from debate.
Incidentally, it was the government’s readiness to hold a discussion on the Constitution which had broken the early deadlock in Parliament as the Congress stuck to its demand for a debate on the Adani row.
While the opposition INDIA bloc was a divided House with parties like the Samajwadi Party and Trinamool Congress not agreeing with the primacy given to the Adani issue by the Congress, they rallied together over Shah’s comments.
The highlight of the Session’s legislative agenda was two landmark bills — the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Ninth) Amendment Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill — to give effect to the mechanism of simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and assemblies.
It was introduced in Lok Sabha on December 17 and was referred to a 39-member Joint Committee of Parliament on Thursday.
Singalling the deepening divide among different stakeholders in Parliament, opposition parties submitted a notice to move a motion of no-confidence against Dhankhar, but it was dismissed by Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh, who slammed it as an act of impropriety, being severely flawed and drawn in haste to mar the Chairperson’s reputation.
At least 60 opposition members had signed the notice on December 10 for removal of Dhankhar from his post, alleging he was “biased” and they did not have trust in him.
