An emaciated Opposition has to unitedly fight the Government on the floor of the House than stage walkouts
Can the Rajya Sabha be the conscience of the nation and uphold democratic traditions with fierce debates, dialogue, checks and balances? Can it still be representative of the federal character of India? If the passing of the farm Acts was any indication, then the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has already become over-confident about subverting parliamentary fairplay and justifying its authoritative weight by managing numbers. Worse, it is using the Parliament to tick off the boxes in its manifesto, prioritising party over governance and trampling any opposing view as redundant, even if reasoned. Controversial Bills have always been open for discussion in the House, often moved to relevant parliamentary committees for careful perusal and closing deficiencies. But the voice vote — which is nothing more than a shouting match of who gets heard louder and which has so far been used to pass Bills that are consensual — for farm Bills changed all that. Though the legislations split the House down the middle, a “friendly” Chair ensured that the voice vote could be resorted to as a bypass. And now that the NDA has further consolidated its position in the Rajya Sabha, crossing the 100-mark after nine BJP candidates were elected unopposed, co-option has a possibility of becoming more a rule than the exception. On the other hand, the Congress, which dominated the Upper House, is now down to 38 seats — its lowest ever tally — in the 242-member House after it lost two more seats to the BJP in the current elections. Out of the 11 Rajya Sabha seats that were vacant, nine were won by BJP candidates, taking the party’s tally to 92 seats. While it is still some distance away from the halfway mark of 121 to have a say on its own, it has its allies and issue-based supportive parties to count on. The Janata Dal (United) has five seats. The smaller parties like RPI-Athawale, Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), Mizo National Front (MNF), National People’s Party (NPP), Naga People’s Front (NPF), Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) and Bodoland People’s Front (BPF) have a seat each besides four nominated members. Meanwhile, the AIADMK with nine MPs, BJD with nine MPs, TRS with seven MPs and YSRCP with six MPs have been crucial in ensuring the passage of controversial Bills.
The Opposition has anyway been emaciated since the big Lok Sabha verdict last year, the biggest loser being the Congress. And now with the grand old party’s dismal presence in the Upper House, it has never looked so exhausted and beaten. In the absence of a counter-agenda, particularly a convincing economic one, or a strident approach, it has frankly ceded its responsibility as the main Opposition party, leave alone leading others. Besides, its intra-party stasis means that it continues to be visionless. And reactive politics is certainly not working for it. Of course, with these numbers, the BJP will now claim a high efficiency in the Parliament, which will be measured by the swiftness with which it pushes legislation, some of it being agenda-driven rather than being qualitatively relevant. The 16th Lok Sabha passed 133 Bills. The Government also promulgated 45 Ordinances, which were subsequently legislated without too much obstruction. A single-party dominance means a frightful shrinkage of deliberative discussions and the conversion of ill-conceived ideas into State policy. According to a report by PRS, which tracked the BJP Government’s passage of Bills, the time spent on the Question Hour, discussions and calling attention motions had dipped significantly in the pre-COVID session. Many demands for a discussion were guillotined too. Add to that protests and adjournments, which the Opposition had to resort to in the absence of being allowed to be heard as per convention, and the Parliament has anyway been reduced to being a tool of the ruling party rather than being a nation’s watchdog. The Rajya Sabha, so far, has been responsible for ensuring scrutiny, prizing governance over party-driven point-scoring and protecting federalism. Not for nothing did Justice DY Chandrachud, while registering his dissent in the case on the Aadhaar Act of 2016, say, “As a revising chamber, the Constitution makers envisioned that it will protect the values of the Constitution, even if it is against the popular will. The Rajya Sabha is a symbol against majoritarianism.” But looks like bicameralism is a shell for what is for all practical purposes becoming a monolithic institution. There are fewer and fewer democratic tools left to hold the Government to account. If anything, the balance of power intended by our founding fathers has been overturned for sure. Dissent has anyway been a casualty in the Modi regime. Now, the House, that at least was a platform for alternative perspectives, is in danger of losing its essence to the brute force of mathematics. As it is, the Government in its last term had bypassed the Rajya Sabha by passing crucial amendments through the Money Bill route that disallows amendments there. Then the farm Bill fiasco happened. And now with increasing strength, the NDA can very well design approaches to get its way and reduce the rulebook to a mere tokenism. As for the Opposition, particularly the Congress, it has no option but to at least unite on devising joint parliamentary strategies and make the most of the time allotted to it for legislative business and interventions. All non-BJP parties have to be present at all times and adopt more constructive means of getting themselves heard as disruptions like walkouts only help the ruling combine in the end. Otherwise, we are staring at the possibility of majoritarianism bulldozing the greatest of our institutions.