Rajya Sabha ended its Monsoon Parliamentary session on Wednesday owing to the rising Coronavirus cases. In the history of India, there will be mentions of these sessions on account of the way the leading party and opposition behaved. The members broke the decorum again and again. The bills passed are also in news, be it the farm bill or labor laws. In two days, Rajya Sabha passed a total of 15 bills on account of no opposition party. They did what they deemed right to do.
Absence of the opposition from Rajya Sabha
The opposition parties boycotted the Rajya Sabha proceedings on account of the suspension of eight members for their unruly attitude in-house. This led to their suspension and subsequently, the boycott of the opposition to attend the parliamentary sittings. Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu said, “Though it is not the first time that some members were suspended and Bills passed when some sections of the House boycotted the proceedings, I find it extremely palpable. This kind of situation needs to be avoided at all means.”
He also said that the bills passed in their absence is a move out of helplessness and has to “take action against the members as per the Rules.” The monsoon session ran for only 8 sittings as against the normal 18 sittings due to the pandemic. The extraordinary time to restore our normal life needed extra jurisdiction from the official authorities. Rajya Sabha deemed it justified that the bills had to reach the next step for everyone’s advantage.
The suspended members are
- Derek O’Brien and Dola Sen of the Trinamool Congress,
- Rajiv Satav, Ripun Bora, and Syed Nasir Hussian of the Congress,
- KK Rajesh and Elamaram Kareem of the Communist Party of India and
- Sanjay Singh of Aam Aadmi Party.
Details of the proceedings
Further, explaining the proceedings, Naidu said, “During the 10 sittings, we passed a total of 25 bills and introduced six bills. The productivity of the House has been 100.47%. The House gave written replies to a total of 1,567 unstarred questions during the 10 sittings. The members raised issues of urgent public importance through 92 zero Hour and 66 Special Mentions.”
The Monsoon session started on September 14, 2020. Both Houses met for four hours each except for the weekend. However, the ruling BJP has not given a clarifying statement as to why they did not allow a vote on Farm Bills, why the mics broke down, and why the House did not hear several parties’ opposition.
