In Lok Sabha, a new high

Despite all its unruly proceedings and acrimonious exchanges, the 16-hour marathon sitting on Gujarat is a milestone in the history of Parli...

Despite all its unruly proceedings and acrimonious exchanges, the 16-hour marathon sitting on Gujarat is a milestone in the history of Parliament. The Opposition deserves credit for making the government go through the wringer of a censure motion on Gujarat. That was democracy at its best. It looked all the better because the Lok Sabha took up the censure motion on April 30, the very day Pakistan happened to engage in its latest experiment of adopting ‘‘real democracy’’ through a referendum.

Though the Vajpayee government defeated the motion under Rule 184 with a comfortable margin, the Opposition has succeeded in holding it to account for the prolonged communal problem in Gujarat. The main functions of Parliament are (i) to make laws, (ii) to exercise control over public finance and (iii) to enforce executive accountability. The admission of the censure motion under Rule 184 is a fine example of Parliament doing its job of enforcing executive accountability. The government’s own preference for dealing with the Gujarat issue was a ‘‘short duration discussion’’ under Rule 193 which does not entail any voting and would therefore have spared it much embarrassment. The government would have probably had its way but for the fortuitous circumstance that the presiding officer of the Lok Sabha, Deputy Speaker P.M. Sayeed, is a Congress MP. But, who knows, the late G.M.C. Balayogi might also have admitted the motion under Rule 184, considering Telugu Desam’s ambivalent attitude to it.

This is not to suggest that the decision on the admission of the motion is pure politics. On the contrary, the attempt here is to show that Parliament often gets less than its due, especially because there is so little understanding of its procedures and practices. Every time the Opposition MPs disrupt the proceedings on any issue, the knee-jerk reaction in the media is to say they are neglecting their duties in their zeal to score political points. But in the present case, the tactic adopted by the Opposition MPs of holding up the Lok Sabha proceedings for six whole days has paid off in the form of the discussion on Gujarat under Rule 184. To be sure, the Opposition MPs have in the process delayed the passage of some Bills. But, don’t forget, all that disruption served the more pressing purpose of forcing the NDA allies to take a clear stand on Gujarat, an issue that is currently uppermost on the nation’s mind.

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The eighth Lok Sabha never held any such discussion on the November 1984 massacre

Much as the government made snide attacks on it, Sayeed’s decision to admit the Gujarat motion under Rule 184 was based on solid reasoning. The Speaker’s power to permit a discussion under that provision on ‘‘a matter of general public interest’’ is subject to 18 restrictions. The government contended that any discussion on law and order in Gujarat, a state subject, was impermissible under Rule 184 because one of the stipulated restrictions is that the motion ‘‘shall not relate to a matter which is not primarily the concern of the Government of India.’’ Sayeed rejected the government’s objection on the basis of a precedent set in 1997 when the Lok Sabha discussed some developments in Bihar on a motion under Rule 184. More importantly, Sayeed pointed out that under Article 355 of the Constitution, it is the duty of the Union to protect every state against internal disturbances and ensure that its government is carried on in accordance with the Constitution.

The discussion that followed in the Lok Sabha marks a new high on the scale of executive accountability because there has never quite been anything like it on any of the earlier communal conflagrations. In fact, the 1984 Delhi massacre, which figured prominently in the discussion on Gujarat, offers a study in contrast. The eighth Lok Sabha never found it important enough to hold any such discussion on the November 1984 massacre. The handful of Opposition MPs that were there in that Lok Sabha were so tame that they did not dare mention the killing of Sikhs when a motion to condole Indira Gandhi’s assassination was being discussed in January 1985. Neither did they do so when a motion to condole the victims of the Bhopal gas leak of December 1984 was taken up the following month.

Rajiv Gandhi could without a murmur of protest from anybody in Parliament retain P.V. Narasimha Rao in the government even though he was the home minister during the massacre in Delhi. Worse, Rajiv also promoted H.K.L. Bhagat within two months of the massacre to the cabinet rank despite his alleged complicity in the violence.

Such appalling negligence on the part of Eighth Lok Sabha can never be a benchmark for parliamentary functioning. By those standards, Sonia Gandhi’s demand for an inquiry by a Supreme Court judge into the Gujarat disturbances may in fact seem misplaced. The Eighth Lok Sabha never discussed the report of the Ranganath Misra Commission, which anyway did a whitewash of the 1984 massacre. So, with all its faults, whatever Parliament has now done about Gujarat is a big jump on the scale of executive accountability.