TMC terms Modi govt' passing bills without debate as 'autocracy'

Trinamool Congress MPs Sukhendu Shekhar Roy and Kakoli Ghosh Dastadar, while placing some figures in front of the media on Friday, alleged that the way this government is clearing bills without discussion in the Parliament, it appears that we are heading towards autocracy instead of democracy.

New Delhi:The Monsoon session of Parliament may have been going through an uproar and the opposition is accusing the government of not discussing many important subjects, but even amidst the ruckus by both sides, the passage of the bills continues in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.

Trinamool Congress MPs Sukhendu Shekhar Roy and Kakoli Ghosh Dastadar, while placing some figures in front of the media on Friday, alleged that the way this government is clearing bills without discussion in the Parliament, it appears that we are heading towards autocracy instead of democracy.

Trinamool MP Sukhendu Shekhar Roy said that a total of 25 bills have been passed in both the houses in which only the government side has participated in the discussion. The average discussion on these bills is only ten minutes per bill. Eight bills have been passed in the Rajya Sabha in 12 days and the average discussion on each bill has been 13 minutes. At the same time, 13 bills have been passed in the Lok Sabha in six days and the average discussion on each bill has been eight minutes. None of these bills was sent to the Standing Committee or the Select Committee.

He further said that 60% of the bills introduced in the 14th Lok Sabha were sent to the Parliamentary Committee, while in the 16th Lok Sabha, 71% of the bills were sent to the Standing Committee or Select Committee. If we talk about the current tenure of the 17th Lok Sabha i.e. Modi government, from 2019 to December 2020, only 11% of the bills have been sent to the standing or select committee.

If we look at the parliamentary history of the country, in the first 30 years only one out of every ten bills came through an ordinance. Over the next thirty years, this figure was on an average two ordinances out of 10 bills. But in the bills passed in the first term of the Modi government, on average 3.5 out of every ten bills have been brought through ordinances.

If we look at the figures so far in the 17th Lok Sabha, on average 3.7 bills have been brought through ordinances in every ten bills. These ordinances are brought when the Parliament is not in session and the government is in a hurry to pass these bills as soon as the session starts. Sukhendu Shekhar Roy further said that even after 782 days after the formation of the government, the Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha has not yet been appointed. This is the first time in the history of Parliament that there is no Deputy Speaker in the House for such a long time.

Apart from this, Trinamool Congress has also raised questions on the working style of the Prime Minister's Office. The Trinamool MP said that when Manmohan Singh's government was in power between 2009 and 2014, a total of 21 subjects were answered by the Prime Minister, but Prime Minister Modi's office has not answered a single question in the Rajya Sabha so far in its second term.

Six Trinamool MPs were suspended for a day for disrupting the proceedings of the House, while Rajya Sabha MP Shantanu Sen has been suspended for the entire session. The government is accusing the opposition of not allowing discussion and Parliament proceedings, while on the other hand, the opposition parties say that the government should be ready to discuss and answer on the issues of farmers, inflation, Pegasus spyware, and Covid management.