Question and answer: on Parliament, parliamentary norms

In an unusual departure from established parliamentary convention, the Lok Sabha adopted the motion of thanks to the President’s address to Parliament without the Prime Minister’s reply to the debate on February 5. The explanation by the Lok Sabha Speaker, Om Birla, for the Prime Minister not replying to the discussion on the motion raised more questions than it answered. Mr. Birla said that he had concrete information about Opposition Members of Parliament (MP) planning something “unexpected”, obliquely suggesting that they may have caused harm to the Prime Minister inside the House. It is bizarre to assume that the Leader of the House — the Prime Minister — avoids speaking in the House fearing harm from fellow MPs. Developments in the House, earlier and outside, provide a more plausible reason for the Prime Minister not showing up in the Lok Sabha. The Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, during his speech on the discussion on the motion of thanks, sought to cite excerpts from a book by former Chief of the Army Staff, General M.M. Naravane, which was disallowed by the Chair. On the one hand, the LoP was not allowed to speak and, on the other, the Prime Minister chose not to speak. Both are against parliamentary norms and, more than that, a disturbing erosion of democratic accountability.

The debate and reply function as a mechanism through which the executive is held accountable to Parliament. Mr. Birla stated that he had requested the Prime Minister not to come to the House because there were credible inputs about a possible disruption or an “unforeseen” situation near the Prime Minister’s seat. As Congress MP K.C. Venugopal has pointed out in a letter to the Prime Minister, parliamentary rules require that a debate on the motion of thanks must conclude with the Prime Minister’s reply, and if the House wishes to close the discussion without the Prime Minister’s reply, a specific resolution must be moved and adopted. Whether or not the book in question was published, as long as Mr. Gandhi was willing to authenticate its contents and place it before the Chair, he should have been allowed to speak. The book in question raises serious issues related to national security, and to deny elected members the opportunity to discuss these is indefensible. The portions that Mr. Gandhi cited outside the House, if accurate, point to the tendency of the political executive to evade critical decision-making by passing the buck and then avoiding accountability. A thorough parliamentary discussion concluding with the Prime Minister’s reply would have been the opportunity to prove that charge wrong. By skipping the reply, Prime Minister Narendra Modi proved his critics right.