There is now little more than a year left for the general elections. The division between the opposition and the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is almost certain to deepen after a Gujarat court disqualified Rahul Gandhi from the Lok Sabha membership.
There has been a semblance of bilateral agreement on the issue of governance so far, despite tensions arising from the actions of the Presiding Officers and the suspension of several MPs from the same party in the Rajya Sabha.
Trinamool Congress MPs, for example, were suspended for a session in the Rajya Sabha over their behavior, but Trinamool MPs abstained from voting for the Vice-Presidential election, which was won by NDA candidate Jagdeep Dhankhar by a huge margin. . But now things have changed. Most of the proposals given by the Bharatiya Janata Party are likely to face clear opposition, which will first harm the appointment of top officials along with making laws in Parliament.
Congress member Manish Tewari has repeatedly tried to move an adjournment motion in the Lok Sabha over the border skirmishes with China to force the government to place facts before Parliament. He was also stopped for this. “It has to be seen whether there will be any cooperation (between the government and the opposition) or even whether there is a possibility of cooperation,” he told BLiTZ. Its first test will be with the election of members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) held on March 27. The term of the PAC members is one year and the committee is entrusted with the task of examining the accounts of funds allocated by the Parliament for the expenditure of the Government of India.
Reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India are often the starting point of PAC investigations. The chairman of the PAC has always been the leader of the opposition since the 1960s. It is elected through proportional representation. For this, 22 members are elected, in which 15 are from Lok Sabha and seven from Rajya Sabha. The election this year will take place after Rahul Gandhi was disqualified from the membership of the Lok Sabha.
So it will be interesting to see how the opposition and the ruling party use their votes, especially in the case of second preference votes. Very few people are aware of how much influence the opposition exerts in policy-making even in an inactive parliament. This influence is exerted through departmental standing committees where MPs from the opposition and ruling parties scrutinize policy and laws before they become law.
Many of these meetings have been contentious, such as the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Draft Personal Data Protection Bill, which attached several dissenting notes to the final report. As a result, the government completely changed the draft bill.
The functioning of committees also sets the tone for wider consultations, especially on legislation or policy changes. The anti-defection law is not involved in the discussion. In such a situation, political parties are free to take a different stand in public and another stand in the committee. But experts agree that the process enriches the process of policy making.
For example, cooperation between the government and the opposition played a key role in bringing about a highly refined version of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, which replaced the 1986 law. The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 was passed only after the Committee on Food and Consumer Affairs examined the earlier version of the Bill. The committee had recommended several amendments, including an increase in the fine. The government accepted most of these and incorporated them in the 2019 Act. The National Medical Commission Bill, 2017 also saw several changes after several recommendations of the Standing Committee on Health were incorporated into the 2019 law.
There is another election about which there is no discussion in the government at present and that is for the post of Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha which has been lying vacant for almost four years. The ruling party says that there is no need for this election immediately as bills are being passed and discussions are also taking place in the House. A minister argued that ‘there is a panel of nine members who can act as Chairman to assist the Speaker of the Lok Sabha.’
Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh says, ‘There is no Deputy Speaker in the Lok Sabha for the last four years. It is unconstitutional. Take an example from March 1956 when Nehru proposed the name of the opposition Akali Dal MP and his critic, Sardar Hukam Singh, for the post and he was unanimously elected.’
A PIL is pending in the Supreme Court. Constitutional posts that require joint consultation with the opposition have been filled except for one, that of the Lokpal, which has the power to investigate allegations of corruption against anyone, including the prime minister . There is only one acting Lokpal from May 2022. The government says that the process of appointment of Lokpal has started. It has to be seen how far the opposition will cooperate with the government in the appointment of a new Lokpal.
