A necessary pit stop in parliamentary business 28 October 2022

Context – 

• The Competition (Amendment) Bill, 2022, and the Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2022 were sent to the Standing Committee of Parliament for comprehensive investigation during the just-finished monsoon session of Parliament (July-August).
• This is a big move in the wake of the Opposition’s repeated complaint that the Government has been attempting to steamroll different pieces of legislation in recent sessions.
• The government is concerned that so much time is spent in interruptions in Parliament that the legislative process, as it is, gets unreasonably prolonged, and that submitting bills to Standing Committees may be counterproductive – adding to the delay.

Committees of Parliament:

Parliamentary committees are constituted to research and deal with numerous issues that, due to their bulk, cannot be dealt with directly by the legislature. They play a crucial role in Indian democracy by monitoring the operation of the executive branch and providing diverse policy recommendations to the legislative.

They serve as ‘Mini-Parliament’: smaller groups of MPs from both Houses from various political parties that meet throughout the year. Parliamentary committees are not constrained by popular demands, which often impede the functioning of parliament.

The parliamentary committee operates in the spirit of debate and discussion since sessions are ‘closed door’ and members are not bound by party whips. Furthermore, they operate away from the public eye, remain casual compared to the regulations that regulate legislative procedures, and serve as excellent teaching grounds for new and inexperienced members of the House.

There are two types of parliamentary committees: 

1. Standing committees
2. Ad Hoc committees.

Standing Committees include:

Permanent (constituted once a year or on a periodic basis) and continuous work They can be divided into the following general categories.

1. Financial Committees
2. Departmental Standing Committees (24)
3. Committees to Inquire
4. Committees to Scrutinise and Control
5. Committees Relating to the Day-to-Day Business of the House
6. House-Keeping Committees or Service Committees

Ad hoc Committees: 

The temporary and will vanish once the appointed duty is completed.

Ad hoc committees are classified into two types: inquiry committees and advisory committees.

Departmental Standing Committees (DSCs) of Parliament:

1. Given the enormity of the legislative agenda, it is difficult to address all Bills under consideration by Parliament in-depth on the House floor.
2. Departmental Standing Committees are where a proposed law is discussed in detail.
3. Parliament has 24 Department Related Parliamentary Standing Committees (DRSC), comprising members of the Parliament of both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha in the ratio of 2:1, which are duly constituted by the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, jointly.

Standing Committees’ Role:

• The main aim of the department-related standing committees is to enhance government responsibility to Parliament through more extensive discussion of actions in these committees; the objective is not to weaken or criticize the administration or government, but to improve it by investing more Parliamentary support in it.
• As a result, the primary function of departmental standing committees is to ensure greater responsibility of the executives, namely the Council of Ministers, to Parliament.
• These Departmental Standing Committees are very active when it comes to analyzing the budget.

Members of Standing Committees:

• Each committee has 31 members, 21 of whom are appointed by the Speaker of the Lok Sabha from among its members and 10 by the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha from among its members. Each member is appointed for a one-year term.
• A minister cannot serve on the committee. If a person becomes a minister after accepting his membership, he is no longer a member of the relevant committee.
• In the Lok Sabha, there are 24 standing committees, with 16 departmental standing committees and 8 departmental standing committees in the Rajya Sabha.

Committees of the Lok Sabha

1. Committee on Agriculture
2. Committee on Chemicals and Fertilisers
3. Committee on Defence
4. Committee on Energy. al Affairs
5. Committee on Energy.
6. Committee on Finance
7. Committee on Food, Consumer Affairs, and Public Distribution
8. Committee on Information Technology
9. Committee on Labour
10. Committee on Petroleum and Natural Gas
11. The Committee on Railways
12. Committee on Coal and Steel
13. Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment
14. Committee on Urban Development
15. Committee on Water Resources
16. Committee on Rural Development

The Committees of the Rajya Sabha

1. Committee on Commerce
2. The Committee on Home Affairs
3. The Committee on Human Resource Development
4. The Committee on Health and Family Welfare
5. The Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice
6. Committee on Industry
7. The Committee on Science & Technology, Environment & Forests
8. The Committee on Transport, Tourism, and Culture

Relevant parliamentary data on the working of Parliament and its committees:

• The functioning of the monsoon session of Parliament this year bears testimony to this fact: the Lok Sabha’s productivity was 47% and the Rajya Sabha’s only 42%.
• The percentage of Bills having been referred to the DRSCs during the tenures of the 14th (2004-2009), 15th (2009-2014) and 16th Lok Sabhas (2014-2019) has been 60%, 71% and 27%, respectively.
• The fall in this percentage during the 16th Lok Sabha was witnessed largely in the second half of its session, when the government was in a hurry to push its big ticket reforms through and the Opposition was equally adamant about stalling them in view of the high stakes involved in the 2019 elections.

The Committee vs the Parliament:

• Even while the government is not required to agree to refer each Bill to the DRSC, experience, both nationally and globally, has shown that sending a Bill to the DRSC is beneficial to the legislative process.
• It has been claimed that bills that are not presented to parliamentary committees are not thoroughly evaluated, particularly from the standpoint of consumers and stakeholders, and remain just a bureaucratically constructed piece of law. As evidence of this, the three farm bills were approved without being referred to the DRSC and had to be removed afterwards.
• The scrutiny of bills by parliamentary committees benefits the government more than the opposition. The obvious reason for this is that the tone and atmosphere of the debates in the parliamentary committee and in Parliament are very different.
• Because the committee meetings are held behind closed doors, they are held in a more friendly and pleasant manner than they would be in Parliament.
• The debates in these committees typically add value to the text of the law, and most of the time, members endeavour to find an agreement despite their party stances.
• Furthermore, such pieces of legislation, after being examined in committees, have some form of ownership by the committee members, both from the governing and opposition sides, even if it is also a function of the chairman of the committee’s expertise.

The Future Prespectives:

It has been noticed that the unwillingness to send the Bills to the committee stems from the Ministry concerned’s delay and ignorance, rather than ideological or policy considerations. As a result, the following modifications to processes for Bill consideration might be proposed.

• Bills can be referred to a DRSC of Parliament by the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. Make this a mandatory or automatic necessity.
• An exception might be granted with the special consent of the Speaker/Chairperson following thorough justification. The House’s power to send bills to the Standing Committee through an amendment would, of course, be unchanged.
• All debates in the Parliamentary Standing Committee should be open and honest. It may be stipulated that no whip of the party would apply to them during the deliberations of the committee sessions. In any event, they have the right to vote in Parliament for or against the Bill.
• The committees might be given a certain deadline to make recommendations and deliver their reports, which can be established by the Speaker/Chairman. The Speaker/instruction Chairman’s is typically followed by the committees.
• To address just political exigencies, it might be stated that if the committee fails to make its report within the approved/extended time frame, the Bill may be brought immediately before the House concerned.
• To ensure excellent work in the committees, experts in the subject may be called to contribute the essential domain expertise as well as assist present the most recent advances and trends in that industry from across the world.
• If the government of the day requests it and the Speaker/Chairman finds it appropriate, the Speaker/Chairman should have the authority to impose a strict time restriction.
• There is usually enough time between two sessions to organise committee meetings for bill deliberations in legislative committees.
• When it comes to ministry budget recommendations, committees should not restrict themselves to just debating them and adopting them with a few caveats or modifications here and there. They should also provide recommendations to the Ministry for new projects and people-friendly policies.

Outcome:

Both the administration and the opposition must maintain the sanctity and good work of ‘mini Parliaments,’ which will improve Parliamentary democracy.