Parliament Stifled, Business, and a Word of Advice

CONTEXT: Despite the limited monsoon session and constraints, Members of Parliament (MPs) must scrutinise the government’s work and guide policy.

Impact of COVID on Legislatures:

• States have held very short sessions — some met just for a day — in which they ratified a number of ordinances, and hardly questioned any executive action over the last few months

• Parliament has curtailed its proceedings: through - 

• Truncated Zero Hour (in which members raise issues pertinent to their constituents and of wider public interest), and 
• Cancelled Question Hour (in which Ministers have to answer questions raised by members). 

Roles of key organs of state

• Executive: Take decisions and perform various public tasks. 
• Legislature: Making laws and policies beneficial to the public and hold the government accountable while they themselves are accountable to citizens through regular elections.

• Judiciary: Ensure that all actions are made within the boundaries of the Constitution and laws made by the legislature.

Current Issues related to Parliament

• Dilution of the role: It has not questioned and monitored the activity of the executive.

• For, E.g. while in the United Kingdom, there were discussions for bringing legislation checking the misuse of Contact tracing Apps, India went ahead with executive decision to roll out Arogya Setu.

• Lack of parliamentary insight: has been largely absent through the last six months.

• For, E.g. During this period, over 900 central and nearly 6,000 State government notifications have been issued which are related to managing the pandemic, with no supervision.

• Only Post-mortem analysis can be done on the government’s response to the crisis during this period

• The long gap between sittings: 

• Parliament will be meeting after 175 days, 

• Parliamentary committees did not meet for about four months, and after that have had only in-person meetings, which have led to low attendance, given travel risks and restrictions.

• Court interventions: judicial intervention in many policy issues complicate the issues for E.g.

• The Supreme Court is neither equipped nor mandated to balance policy options related to lockdowns and the hardships caused to the migrants
• Court decided to limit the period in which telecom companies have to pay their dues to the government, which is also a policy matter.

• Short session, much business: It has a large number of issues to discuss in the short 18-day session. For example, the government has issued 11 ordinances since the last sitting.

• A slew of Notification issues: During this period, over 900 central and nearly 6,000 State government notifications have been issued which are related to managing the pandemic. 
• Central Ordinance Issued: 

• Five of these relate to the COVID-19 crisis and the lockdown: 

• extending tax filing dates, 
• moratorium on new insolvency cases, 
• protection for health workers, and 
• temporary cuts in salaries and allowances of Members of Parliament and Ministers. 

• Two ordinances related to the supersession of the Boards of the councils that regulate homoeopathy and Indian systems of medicine, 
• One ordinance allowing the Reserve Bank of India to regulate cooperative banks (a similar bill is pending in Parliament), and 
• Three Ordinances related to agricultural markets (allowing contract farming and trading outside mandis).

Way Forward

• Parliament should refer those ordinances with long-term implications to the respective committees for detailed scrutiny.
• In the absence of Question Hour and shorter zero hour, Parliamentarians must resort to other available options to ensure new laws and expenditure proposals are passed only after detailed discussion.