Rajya Sabha to function finally, on last three days
Given that the Rajya Sabha had been non-functional throughout the ongoing Winter Session of Parliament, the news that it will return to business for the remaining three days beginning Monday, December 21, is heartening. Some sort of agreement has been reached among the parties at a meeting chaired by Vice President and Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Hamid Ansari to facilitate the working of the House and take up important legislative business pending due to the chaos that the Rajya Sabha had witnessed over the past weeks.
To make up for the loss of time, many members have even accepted the possibility of working late in the evenings. Finally, at least six Bills, on which consensus has been reached, can be passed by the Upper House. They are important legislations pertaining to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, atomic energy, anti-hijacking decisions, Appropriation, commercial courts and arbitration. It is good that the parties have also agreed to discuss threadbare (how in-depth it will be, however, remains a matter of speculation, given the time constraint) the child labour prohibition Bill, whistleblowers protection Bill and juvenile law amendment Bill.
While the willingness of lawmakers to burn the midnight oil to pass these legislations-in-waiting is heart-warming, the question must be asked of those among the present enthusiasts who were responsible for the stalling of the upper House: What did they gain, apart from earning their two-minute glory on prime-time television shows and space in the print mediaIJ While it is pointless to now go into the ‘reasons' the disruptionists had offered to justify their sabotaging of parliamentary work, some of those reasons were weak excuses.
One theory on why those who had stopped the functioning of the Rajya Sabha have softened, is the growing perception among the people about their wrongdoing. The Congress especially realised that its strategy to take on the Government by disallowing it to present Bills and get them passed, had no sympathisers beyond party confines. It's true that members of a few other parties friendly to the Congress had also added their lung power, but most had demanded the restoration of order.
Meanwhile, the bad news is that neither is the Goods and Services Tax Bill likely to be adopted in this Session nor will the amendments to the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000, go through. Both have enormous significance — the first in taking our economic growth to the next level and the second in tackling the rising threat of lawlessness by juveniles who have been increasingly engaging in serious offences of rape and murder.
Unfortunately, neither the plea by sane voices from political quarters nor appeals by non-Government organisations and trade and industry bodies has had the slightest positive impact on the Congress, which continues to block the GST Bill on specious grounds. Similarly, even the heart-rending pleas by parents of the victim in the December 16, 2012, Delhi gangrape case involving a minor and the fervent appeals by various parliamentarians in the upper House as well as by Union Minister for Women and Child Welfare Maneka Gandhi, to strengthen the Act, have fallen on deaf ears. One hopes that good sense will prevail sooner than later.