Budget Session of Parliament is recently concluded and is marked by protest. In the budget session, Lok Sabha spent only 1% on legislative business whereas Rajya Sabha spent 6% on legislative business. Lok Sabha has spent 53 hours discussing the budget. In the 15th Lok Sabha, a no – confidence motion has also moved but was not discussed on it.
The Lok Sabha passed the Finance bill in the second part of the session within 18 minutes without any ministers’ participation and since 2000, this was the lowest time taken on discussing the Finance Bill. More importantly, the number of public discussion was also lowest since 2000.
We have seen another session of the Parliament which has just wiped out by doing a little work. It appears like our Parliament is in a big crisis. We need to have a debate on this subject. There are many areas which we need to reform like Anti- defection law, voter’s recording, Parliament’s Agenda.
Sushma Swaraj, Minister of External Affairs of India spoke on the proceedings of the monsoon session of Parliament. She says that there are three important bills to be passed. They are Food Security Bill, Land acquisition and pension bills and were successful in sending the three bills.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the number of annual sitting is reducing gradually from 125 – 140 days. There are two ways to tackle this: increasing the number of annual sitting, discuss about the matter if there are minimum number of MPs asking for the matter.
The legislative process have three aspects that needs to be revisited: Ordinances issuance, scrutiny by committee, and bills of the money. However, Rajya Sabha’s chairman decides to refer the bills to the relevant minister. While in the last Parliament, the bills were referred to committees. The percentage of the bills were nearly 75%. The process of the committee is getting mandatory and these would lead to high scrutiny of bills.
Legislatures have a great power to enact laws in most countries. A session is started in case of emergency session of the legislatures. In the matter of money bills the Council of Ministers needs the help of Lok Sabha. Rajya Sabha hs nothing to say in this matter of money bills. Many bills such as Finance Bills, Aadhar bills were marked as money bills recently.