In an unprecedented move to corner the BJP in the Upper House of Parliament, the Congress party has initiated a process to punish a member of an Opposition party who disrupted the proceedings of the House last year.The Congress chief whip in Rajya Sabha, V Narayanasamy, had given a notice against BJP member Rudra Narayan Pany for disrupting proceedings on November 28 last year while the House was considering the AIIMS Bill. The Rajya Sabha chairman, Mohammad Hamid Ansari, had referred the matter to the Privileges Committee headed by Deputy Chairman K Rahman Khan, which served Pany a showcause notice.Speaking to The Indian Express, Narayanasamy said: “The BJP member not only obstructed the business of the House, he even came over to the Treasury benches.We have to take a serious view of such a conduct.” When contacted, Pany said: “I have replied to their notice. I have explained that when the Government tried to bulldoze the House to pass the AIIMS Bill without any advance notice, I just went over to the other side to tell my friend Narayanasamy not to rush through it by throwing all democratic norms to the wind. They should not have passed the Bill when the House was not in order. The Committee had summoned me, but I could not appear before it because of my preoccupation with the Standing Committee on Labour.”Meanwhile, as both the Houses of Parliament have witnessed frequent disruptions, a wider point has of late emerged in the consequent debate: whether or not the right of members to speak should prevail over the freedom of others to disrupt proceedings. Ansari made this point while inaugurating the Fourteenth All-India Whips Conference at Mumbai on February 4. “Some questions unavoidably arise and beg for answers: Is not disruption of proceedings during the Question Hour a breach of privilege of individual members who await answers to admitted starred questions, and supplementary questions?” he asked.Though the Congress has made a bold move, it can expect a bumpy road ahead when the matter will be discussed in the Privileges Committee. The 10-member body has three members from the BJP — Arun Jaitley, S S Ahluwalia and Ravi Shankar Prasad — all of them capable of fighting a spirited battle. “It is going to be a test case for inducing a bit of discipline in the way we function,” highly-placed sources said. “It is high time we protected members’ right to speak in the House,” they added.
