Winter Session of Parliament Day 3: RS, LS function after brief disruptions; MPs debate Brahmaputra pollution

After a stormy start of the Winter Session, the situation seems to be thawing out a bit as the Upper House managed to pass two bills, both of which were also supported by the Congress. The party, however, remained absent from the Lok Sabha proceedings, which also transacted business in the rest of the day, after staging a walkout within two hours of the start of proceedings. The Congress was demanding an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his comments against his predecessor Manmohan Singh made during the campaigning of the just concluded election for the Gujarat Assembly. Protests in LS, RS in early hours of day The Congress protest rocked the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha during the early hours of the day, however, the uproar did not disrupt the functioning of the Houses for long. The Lok Sabha was adjourned for 30 minutes at 11.30 am after the leader of the Congress party in the House Mallikarjun Kharge raised the issue but Speaker Sumitra Mahajan refused to entertain his demand during the Question Hour. [caption id=“attachment_4266571” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge speaks in the Lok Sabha in New Delhi on Tuesday, during the ongoing winter session of Parliament. PTI[/caption] Soon after the House resumed proceedings, Congress members trooped into the Well raising slogans against the prime minister such as “pradhan mantri maafi mango” (prime minister apologise) and “pradhan mantri sadan mein aao” (prime minister come to the House). In the Rajya Sabha too, Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad raised questions over Modi’s statement on Singh and demanded an apology. “Making derogatory comments about an ex-prime minister and other important dignitaries is unacceptable. Manmohan’s integrity and loyalty to his country have been questioned,” Azad said. However, the situation appeared to defrost after Chairman of the Upper House and Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu suggested the two parties find an amicable solution to their differences and not disrupt the House. Following this, Arun Jaitley, the Leader of the House, assured the Congress-led Opposition that they shall be invited to discuss this issue. Later in the day, there was a minor controversy in the Lok Sabha when TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee claimed there is an “undeclared emergency” in the country. While talking during the motion to adopt the Repealing and Amendment Bill, 2017, Banerjee said, “While there is no doubt that the Emergency in 1975-77 affected many people, there is a kind of Emergency without even constitutionally declaring it nowadays. It is important to make a distinction between the official emergency in 1975 and the post-2014 situation.” But apart from the political blame game, both Houses managed to hold constructive discussions on several issues apart from transacting legislative business. RS passes IIM, Companies Act amendment bill, LS repeals archaic laws In what was a fairly productive day, the Lok Sabha debated three bills and managed to pass two of them, while the Rajya Sabha also passed two bills. In the Lower House, two bills to repeal 245 obsolete and archaic laws, including the 158-year-old Calcutta Pilots Act of 1859 and the 1911 Prevention of Seditious Meeting Act were passed. The Lok Sabha also passed Central Road Fund (Amendment) Bill to sanction funds for the development of waterways. Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the old and many irrelevant pre-Independence laws were the “unfortunate part of the colonial legacy” and repealing them was a progressive move that reflects the “pro-reform” approach of the government. After the Modi government came to power a two-member panel was set up to look into the repealing of archaic laws and the panel also consulted the Centre and the state government before recommending the legislations to be repealed. Some 1,824 acts were repealed since Modi took over the reins of the government, the law minister said. The law minister lauded the move, even as he evaded concrete response on the abolition of the laws criminalising sedition and homosexuality, two other British era rules which have been a subject of larger debates. When Prasad spoke on abolishing the Prevention of Seditious Meeting Act, 1911, he was needled by BJD MP Tathagata Satpathy who alluded to the use of the sedition law by the BJP government against Opposition activists in certain states. BJD MP Pinaki Misra lauded the government for repealing “obsolete” laws but asked if the government would consider doing away with the controversial Section 377. To the question of sedition, the law minister said that all senior ministers in the BJP government including the prime minister had vehemently opposed Emergency in 1975 and his government was in favour of the freedom of the press. On the issue of decriminalising homosexuality, the minister merely commented that a larger debate was needed. The Lok Sabha also passed Central Road Fund (Amendment) Bill which, as TMC’s Roy pointed out, in essence, reroutes money from highway and road development funds to the development of inland waterways. The Rajya Sabha meanwhile passed the IIM bill and the Companies (Amendment) Bill, 2017, both of which were also supported by most Opposition parties, including the Congress. The latter is a bill to amend the Companies Law to strengthen corporate governance standards, initiate strict action against defaulting companies and help improve ease of doing business, while the former seeks to grant greater autonomy and special status to IIMs. The Companies (Amendment) Bill provides for more than 40 amendments to the Companies Act, 2013, which “would help in simplifying procedures, make compliance easy and take stringent action against defaulting companies.” The Congress, although voted in support of it, pointed out some ‘inadequacies’ and raised several questions. While the minister was pushing the bill for passage, former finance minister P Chidambaram pointed out,“Why are you taking power to prescribe another number when Directors’ Index Number (DIN) is a number? Why do you need another number? What is the idea?” He also opposed the proposal to give loans to directors and persons, saying a company should not give loans to the director or to those of interest to a director. He also opposed the amendment to delete Section 195 and 196 which provide for the prohibition of insider and forward trading. MPs also objected to the “one size fits all” principle being adopted by the government in the bill. CPM’s Tapan Sen said that giving same relaxations to Small and Medium Enterprises and large companies amounts to holding the country at ransom. Vivek Gupta of TMC also echoed Chidambaram’s sentiment and said the SMEs are suffering as he called the bill inconclusive. “I am forced to repeat that this Bill is inconclusive and needs further changes… The provision for giving deposit insurance is taken away. FRDI already has a bail-in provision. Now insurance for company deposits is also being taken away,” he said. Moreover, apart from the legislative business, the government also notified the Parliament on several other issues. In Lok Sabha, the government informed the Parliament that it has undertaken a national survey on drug addiction, which is likely to be published in March. Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Thaawarchand Gehlot said Rs 21 crore worth of funds have been allocated for the survey. The Parliament was also told that as many as 318 people, including 203 terrorists and 75 security personnel, were killed in terror-related incidents in Jammu and Kashmir this year so far. In the North East, 97 people, including 51 insurgents and 12 security personnel, were killed in insurgency-related incidents till date, Minister of State for Home Hansraj Ahir said in Lok Sabha during the Question Hour. Members in the Lok Sabha also expressed concern over the contamination of the Brahmaputra river as they asked the government to take up the matter with China from where the river flows into India and inform Parliament about it. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said the matter was of serious concern and assured the House that he will inform “the highest level in the government” about it. The government also informed the Parliament that there was no proposal to make Aadhaar linkage mandatory for property transactions. The government, however, said the rural development ministry had advised the states and Union Territories to explore the possibilities of using consent-based Aadhaar authentication for registration of properties under the provisions of the Registration Act, 1908. In the Rajya Sabha, Jaitley said that the government is ready to include petroleum products under the GST after achieving consensus. The government also sought to defend its move of setting up fast-track courts to try legislators. Opposition parties led by Congress and Samajwadi Party had raised the issue of Supreme Court’s recent direction to the Centre to draft a scheme for setting up fast-track courts to deal exclusively with criminal cases involving legislators and political persons. However, the finance minister tautly defended the move, saying lawmakers should take the lead in setting an example. Jaitley added he was of the personal opinion that like Caesar’s wife, lawmakers should be above suspicion. As elected representatives, can lawmakers say that their trial should be delayed, he said, asking political parties to rise and set an example. “You are class apart… you are lawmakers. You should set the example,” Jaitley said. With inputs from PTI