The List of Disruptions

Lost count of the reasons Parliament was adjourned? Here’s a handy recap of the topics that got our MPs to do the Harlem Shake

WrittenBy:Meghnad S
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If you ask anyone today to close their eyes and picture the Parliament in their head, they get an image of Members of Parliament going crazy inside the House. You picture them storming the well with placards, shouting slogans, while the speaker sitting on his throne-chair tries to make the MPs behave.

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Something not unlike this:

This is a video of the debut of Dr Subramanian Swamy in the Rajya Sabha back in April this year. The moment he mentions Sonia Gandhi (00:35), the Congress goes insane. One of the defining features of Parliament for the past few years has been constant disruptions, endless name-calling and bickering. All our MPs need is a little spark right before every session. Next thing you know, they’re Delhi and doing the Harlem Shake!

This week, we bring you a ready reference of issues that your elected representatives have cared about ‘deeply’ for the past two and a half years, ever since the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government came to power in May 2014.

Keep a watch on the news cycle right before a parliamentary session commences. A definite pattern slowly emerges before every session, in which there’s one major controversy that gets the attention of our leaders in Parliament. The controversy is made worse when the government reacts to it, the opposition counteracts, so on and so forth.

Nifty Little List of Disruptions

Session I (May-June 2014): No Legislative Business happened. Only swearing in of members and the cabinet happened. Remember the iconic moment when PM Modi got emo during his first speech in Parliament?

Session II (July-August 2014): Congress had filed an adjournment motion on ‘rising incidents of communal violence in the country’.

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Accusations flew thick, where the Opposition Leader Mallikarjun Kharge even mentioned that ‘riots’ were happening across the country. But our dear Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu would have none of that! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).

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The context of this notice was unclear. It *seemed* like Congress was just trying to posture and show it was still relevant after its miserable defeat in the2014 general elections. The ghar-wapsi incidents were cropping up at this point of time.

Session III (November-December 2014): Adjournment motions were repeatedly filed on ‘recovery of black money from foreign sources’, especially by the Congress.

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Due to the continued disruptions, Amit Shah *probably* got frustrated and used the words ‘Chunavi Jumla’ for the first time on national television. The words have stuck to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) like a leech ever since.

One more issue that dominated this session was the devastating Kashmir flood on December 2, 2014.

Session IV (February-May 2015): Land Acquisition Bill created quite a furore during this session. And I won’t be incorrect if I say that BJP used every trick in the book to push this bill for two whole sessions, but eventually failed.

Basically, this happened:

Industry: “Oi BJP… Where will we build factories and all? You promised Make in India and Ease of Doing Business only!”

BJP: “Oi Farmer… We want your land for building infrastructure and stuff!”

Farmers: “Umm. No.”

Congress:

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Drought dominated the agenda for this session as well. A 193 discussion was held on ‘agrarian crisis’ pretty much throughout the session.

Session V (July-August 2015): The Land Acquisition battle was still raging, but it had mostly shifted to the Rajya Sabha. Lalit Modi came into the picture during this session. Sushma Swaraj was caught in the eye of the storm with Lalit Modi going Twitter crazy from London. Modi (the other one) shared murky details about him meeting Robert Vadra and Priyanka Gandhi with random Photoshopped anti-corruption banners.

The situation was utterly confusing. Nobody really had any idea who was to blame for what. But everybody wanted to scream about it in Parliament anyway. The Speaker went bonkers, trying to control the protesting MPs:

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In the end, Sushma Swaraj’s reply was one of fine piece of oratory. Definitely worth listening to.

Session VI (November-December 2015): Intolerance time! This was when the Dadri lynching issue dominated the agenda. This session was mostly lost in disruptions as everyone was mighty angry that the one section of the country was becoming ‘intolerant’ and another section was consuming a lot of beef fry.

The government countered it (quite cleverly) by initiating a discussion on ‘India’s commitment to its constitution’ on the occasion of BR Ambedkar’s 125th birth anniversary. November 26 was declared Constitution Day and some interesting debates took place. Here’s the full text of debates, in case you want to browse through.

On that day, for once, our leaders were talking about larger issues and trying to make sense of the situation by extrapolating from historical events. Even PM Modi gave an excellent speech.

Session VII (February-March 2016): The beginning of this session was dominated by the Rohith Vemula suicide and the JNU sloganeering incidents (Azaadi!). The Budget was presented right after this and then the session adjourned for recess.

Sidenote: Usually the Budget session includes the recess and then the following remainder of the session as well. However, this year, the session got prorogued after the first half due to the Uttarakhand crisis. The President had to issue fresh summons for the remainder of the Budget session.

Session VIII (April-May 2016): The second half of the session saw much screaming about the Agusta-Westland scam. The Lok Sabha functioned quite smoothly, despite some minor disruptions. Some important bills were passed in this session as well, including the amendment to the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act which allows political parties to accept funds from foreign sources and the amendment to the Reserve Bank of India Act that enables the formation of the Monetary Policy Committee. Both of these amendments were sneakily inserted in the Finance Bill 2016 and passed as money bills.

After the session, Mr Jaitley must be like:

But but but, the highlight of this session was the grand entrance of Dr Subramanian Swamy (aka the Subramanianator). The only man alive to give Ornob Goswamy a taste of his own medicine.

Session IX (July-August 2016):

And finally, we come to the last Monsoon session (ze latest one). The big issue of disruption was the Kashmir crisis, but surprisingly, the last session was quite civil. Perhaps that is the very reason the GST Bill was passed and also the *cough* Voldemort Bill *cough*.

Your dear columnist has been writing about this session obsessively, you can find the posts here:

Now, you can go right ahead and impress your drunk friends at Parties by telling them about how much you know about the Parliament. Keep the link to this post handy!

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