The Prime Minister has taken serious note of some BJP MPs skipping attendance in Parliamentary proceedings and thus delaying deliberations on vital issues. Non attendance of proceedings often lead to postponement of deliberations for want of quorum meaning the minimum number of MPs required being present in the House. At the Weekly Parliamentary Party meetings, Prime Minister talked tough about absence of his party MPs from meetings and proceedings arguing that there was no question of requesting the MPs to be present at the proceedings because it was their duty to be present in the Parliament.
There is full justification for the PM to take serious note of this discrepancy on the part of MPs. Though the Prime Minister has addressed his party MPs, yet as a matter of principle the elected representatives of the people have a duty to be present in the House and to take full part in the deliberations. The people expect them to put their difficulties and problems before the Parliament and the Government for redress. Now if the elected representatives chose to remain absent how then can they convey the problems of the people to the House or how can they understand what the debate in the Parliament is about. It is their moral responsibility to be in the House without asking by the party leader. The Prime Minister even put a tab saying that he can call his party MPs at any time meaning that the MPs have to be available in the Parliament.
Ananth Kumar, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs says that there were a number of occasions when the House could not meet owing to lack of quorum. MPs should understand that democracy is an expensive system of governance and the tax payer pays heavily to maintain the system. This they do trusting that the elected representatives will represent peoples’ demands, aspirations and problems. MPs often meet in the Central Hall for informal talk and the PM has no difficulty with that. All that he wants is that the MPs should be inside the Parliament.
The PM wants that MPs should cultivate the habit of responding to responsibilities and creating parliamentary culture. PM’s remarks are also applicable to the State Legislative Assembly whenever the Assembly is in session. We have also, at a number of times, found that owing to lack of quorum, the deliberations in the Legislative Assembly had to be postponed. There could be punitive measures to curb the tendency of remaining absent from the deliberations of the law making body among the MPs or the MLAs. However, we are confident that the MPs and MLAs in both the Houses are very responsible and sensible people and need only a hint which the PM has very forcefully dropped. Let us now wait and see the results of the advice of the Prime Minister. It is true that the MPs have to do a lot of leg work to get things done and to satisfy their constituencies. They can draw a schedule of attending those duties also but without disrupting attendance in the Parliament when important issues are debated.
Follow our WhatsApp channel