Ancient parliamentary rules and ludicrous interpretations

As the Rajya Sabha indulged in a farcical debate yesterday on Lokpal (farcical because it all seemed completely stage-managed by the government that had no hope in hell of seeing it through minus the amendments demanded by the opposition and also some of its own allies), three things, among several interesting issues, really stood out.

One, it is clear that when push comes to shove, the presiding officer can tilt the balance in the favour of whoever he/she feels like. Two, the meaning of ‘conflict of interest’ needs to be spelt out clearly, else it ends up with members making strange and obtuse observations that are hilarious and absurd at the same time. And three, the rules of the house have just not kept pace with the new media and hasn’t even reconciled to the fact that the proceedings of the house are now beamed LIVE across the country, indeed the world through the LIVE internet streaming.

Even as the BJP MP and senior journalist Chandan Mitra started talking, the treasury benches raised a furore that he is not writing an editorial, but speaking in the parliament. Following that, he could not even finish half a sentence as the members, including government ministers, kept shouting, not permitting him to speak and the chair said his time was up and asked the next speaker to take the floor. Chandan’s pleas that he was not allowed to speak meant nothing. The same chair, later in the debate, when it was clear that the government would lose the vote and it was critical that enough time is wasted to get to midnight (the president’s assent was to hold the extened session only till midnight of December 29 and not beyond), allowed several independents and single MP parties to speak on for needlessly long duration.

The second point is about the ‘conflict of interest’. When Ram Jethmalani started his fiery talk and named the former biggie of the Congress as being the holder of a Swiss bank account who’s name was revealed in a German magazine, there were noisy protests from the treasury benches, forcing the chair to remove the designation of this biggie from the records of the discussion. At this point, V Narayanasamy, a minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, said since Jethmalani has handled cases related to black money as a lawyer, his raising it here is a conflict of interest. This is as bizarre as it comes. Can a member be barred from raising an issue being debated in the house simply because he has raised it in his professional capacity too? The best retort came from Arun Jaitley who said it is “not conflict of interest, but consistency of interest.”

Then came another gem that if the matter is in the courts, it cannot be discussed in the house. Now imagine, you discuss corruption in the house, but because 2G and CWG etc are being discussed in the courts too, you cannot raise those words in the house. Brilliant! Thankfully, the chair did not agree with these ludicrous contentions.

The third point is about the rules not keeping pace with changes. When Jethmalani was making those observations about the Congress biggie and giving interesting epithets to some others, all of it was being telecast live, not just by the Rajya Sabha TV channel, but almost every news channel as this was the most important issue at the moment. So, as soon as he made those revelations (which incidentally have been doing the rounds on the social media for almost a year), it spread like wildfire all over the net. Facebook status messages were updated and thousands tweeted before the chair intervened and said that the words be deleted/expunged.

Now turn back and look at the rules of the parliament and the privileges of the press available at http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/intro/p20.htm. While the details can be read at the link, the operative portion as far as this incidence is concerned read thus: It has also to ensure that portions of debates expunged from the proceedings of the House by the Presiding Officer are not published. In other words, there can be no freedom of the Press at the cost of privileges of Parliament.

Now clearly, this was done at the time when the only way people got to know what happened in the house was through newspaper reports the next morning, when there was no live telecast, when there were no mobile phones with data connectivity and most importantly, there was no social media where almost every viewer is a potential journalist.

Although the chair ordered deletion of the designation of the person and also that other epithets should be removed, it was too late. The social media was, and is still abuzz with what was said.

Let me not get into whether this can be stopped and how, for these have been debated quite a bit in the recent days, but it is imperative that the rulebooks are given a relook. They need to be in tune with the technological advancements. To me, this reminds of the early mobile phone days, when, the government in all its wisdom, said the choice of technology will be GSM, shutting out better and more efficient technologies that followed.  It was good that it was changed later.

Of course, even after this point is addressed, the issues of bias as also the ludicrous interpretation of some terms, will remain a sore point. Can those ever be addressed? I doubt it.

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