Bill to increase Parliament sittings to 100 days tabled
A Private Member's Bill has been tabled in the Rajya Sabha which seeks to ensure that the Parliament meets for at least 100 days every year. The bill, submitted by Shiromani Akali Dal MP Naresh Gujral, also calls for special sessions for fifteen days to discuss two issues of utmost public importance. Currently, the Parliament meets for 70-80 days annually.
At a time when public cynicism about the country's parliamentarians is at an all time high, there is one MP, who believes that the members of Parliament need to work much harder.He is Naresh Gujral, the Akali Dal MP in the Rajya Sabha. Gujral believes that Parliament needs to meet more often than it does now. Gujral has tabled a private member's Bill, the Parliament Enhancement of Productivity Bill, asking for Parliament to must meet at least for 100 days a year.The Bill could not have come at a more opportune moment. Adjournments are fast becoming a norm rather than an aberration. Complete sessions have been washed out without transacting any business inside the Houses and outside a Shiv Sena MP has made the news for beating up an Air India official.Gujral's Bill, if adopted by the government, could go some distance in not only making Parliament a lot more productive but it will also help redeem the MPs in the eye of the public.WHY THE BILL IS SIGNIFICANTIn addition to making it mandatory for Parliament to sit at least for a hundred days a year, spread over four sessions, it also calls for the convening of a special session of both houses for fifteen days. The special session as envisaged by Gujral will not have either the question hour or the zero hour but will be devoted exclusively to taking up two issues of utmost public importance. It has a provision for each political party submitting at least two issues before the business advisory committee that it wants to be taken up in the special session.Significantly at a time when both Houses of Parliament are routinely adjourned or unable to transact any business on account of disruptions. The bill has a provision for compensating the hours lost due to disruptions by adding it to the number of hours that the Houses must sit to make up for the disruptions. Gujral's Bill is silent on the need to deprive the MP's of their allowances on the days that the house is adjourned due to disruptions.