Poor record of private members' Bills

By A. Jayaram

BANGALORE, APRIL 16. Journalists who have been covering the proceedings of the two Houses of the Legislature for long have not failed to notice the decline in the number of legislators who are capable of threadbare discussion of the Bills introduced by the Government.

There is hardly any clause-by-clause discussion, and the members indulge in generalities. There is also a dearth of members who are capable of finding fault with the drafting of the Bills.

Needless to say, the members can find fault with the Law Department officials if they are capable of critical analysis of the Bills. The Legislature has a very poor record in the matter of private members' Bills and resolutions. For at least a decade now, not a single MLA or MLC in the State has introduced a private member's Bill. What more, only two private members' resolutions have been placed before the two Houses for consideration in the last 25 years. One of the few MLAs who could go into the nitty-gritty of Bills was Mr. H. Ekanthaiah, who was a member of the ninth Assembly, and Mr. H. N. Nanje Gowda and Ms. Pramila Nesargi of the BJP in the last Assembly.

The two resolutions were the one introduced in the Legislative Council by the independent member from Mysore, Prof. M.Sathyanarayana Rao, representing teachers, during 1970-76. It had called for the nationalisation of all private educational institutions. Though the Bill was taken up for discussion on some days, it was never completed and he ceased to be a member. Prof. Sathyanarayana Rao was elected again to the Council in 1982, but he did not press the resolution again.

The last Assembly (Tenth) had before it a private member's resolution from Mr. Vatal Nagaraj calling for the introduction of Prohibition in the State. It was a hardy item on the agenda of the House fixed for Fridays, but was hardly discussed. It may be mentioned that the two Houses of the Legislature have been allotting 30 minutes time every Friday for private members' business. Both of them have a separate committee on Private Members' Bills and Resolutions. In the Assembly, it is headed by the Deputy Speaker, Mr. Manohar H.Tahsildar.

The Committee recently presented a report on the functioning of similar panels in Parliament and some of the State Legislatures- Delhi, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. One of the important recommendations of the 11-member committee is that its members should be selected from among MLAs who have knowledge of law and especially those who have been ministers in the past. The other two recommendations are rather mundane, that the members of the committee should also be enabled to serve on other legislature committees and each MLA should be allotted a constituency development fund of Rs. one crore a year.

The Chief Minister, Mr. S. M. Krishna, has already promised to consider providing such funds to legislators to develop their constituencies.

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Section  : Regional
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