How The President Isn’t Walking The Talk

There’s been a lot of praise for President Pranab Mukherjee’s criticism of the recent uproar in Parliament. But anyone noticed a faint whiff of hypocrisy in there?

WrittenBy:Meghnad S
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Same story this week as last week: Parliament is barely functioning. Still, it’s not as though nothing happened.

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After three weeks of absolute chaos and disruption in Lok Sabha, the government seems to have finally decided to allow discussion on demonetisation in the lower house. Don’t break into a cheerful song just yet because last week was yet again blighted with constant disruptions and adjournments.

Remember when two weeks ago I wrote about the “Rules of Adjournment”, about how the lower house could not decide which rule to discuss demonetisation under? Short recap: the Indian National Congress and Trinamool Congress wanted to nuke the legislative business and debate, which ends with voting under Rule 56. The Government did not want voting and was willing to allow just a debate on Rule 193. They also promised that the Prime Minister would respond to this debate.

Well, the Government won. Sort of. And the Opposition was not happy, to put it mildly. Last Monday, this little item appeared on the list of business:

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FINALLY! SOMETHING!

Sure, I would have preferred a vote, but I thought *at least* there would be a debate!

The debate commenced amidst chaos. I was watching LSTV and didn’t even realise it happened, but records seem to show it did indeed commence.

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The house adjourned shortly after. In next day’s list of business, we saw that the discussion on demonetisation had already commenced.

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All screamy MPs now have no say over which rule it can be discussed under and no voting will be possible on the subject. Government be like: #EPICWIN

Long weekend FTW!

Some of our representatives have been spending a lot of energy on storming the well and screaming at high volumes. The creative energy spent on coming up with new innovative slogans is infinite. After the crazy amount of ‘work’ they have been putting into the cause, they deserved a break.

So this happened:

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Leader of Opposition M Kharge chipped in and gave his two paisa:

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To which, the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs responded with:

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This happened:

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YUZZ! LONG WEEKEND PEOPLE!!

What’s up, Mr President?

“I have no intention of accusing any individual but it (disrupting Parliament) has become a practice.”

~ Pranab Mukherjee, President of India

The news was splashed with reports of President Mukherjee criticising the Parliament for not working. Everyone seemed to break into a slow clap, delighted that the highest authority in India had finally spoken.

Well, not me. I was left a bit confused, to be completely honest.

You see, while it’s okay for the President to sermonise and tell Members of Parliament that they should swallow their screams and work instead, he should also answer one simple question: why is he allowing legislation to be bulldozed in Parliament?

In my last column, I wrote about how democracy died when The Taxation Laws (Second Amendment) bill was bulldozed through in Lok Sabha without giving a single bother. Well, it happened again last week when the Supplementary Demands for Grants was passed in absolute chaos. An expenditure excess of Rs 50,000 crore was approved by Lok Sabha without the three largest opposition parties participating in the debate.

The debate lasted for close to 30 minutes and nobody could make a sense of what was really happening. A bunch of members of Parliament took advantage of the situation and started discussing (and praising) demonetisation, while those opposing notebandi kept screaming hoarse. If they had a little bit of sense, they could have participated in that debate and criticised the government’s move, but… well… nope.

One thing that was common between the earlier bill and the Demands for Grants, apart from the fact that both were passed amidst chaos, was that both were brought into the lower house without warning. There was no time given for amendments to either and the speaker allowed this. But guess who has to power to let the government do such a thing?Well, this guy…

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Look at this innocuous little thing in the Taxation Laws (Second Amendment) Bill, 2016:

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This is what Article 117 of the Consititution of India says:

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This recommendation notice was present in both the bills that were introduced in Parliament. The President is the highest authority in the country whose job is to protect the Constitution. He is outside the purview of the law of the land and can actually dissolve the Lok Sabha. So if he was so concerned about the functioning of Parliament, it is quite curious as to why he allowed these two vital pieces of legislation to be bulldozed through Parliament.

Parliament will shut shop on the 16th this week, so I am going back into a state of depression. While, I’m at it, I leave you with an interesting video about why we are technically living in the year 12017 HE.

CHANGE ALL CALENDARS!

The author can be contacted on Twitter @Memeghnad

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