Rules for 'automatic suspension' in winter session

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, AUG 27. By the early part of the winter session of Parliament a new rule will be in place to enforce the ``automatic suspension'' of MPs for walking into the well of the House in the Lok Sabha or disrupting regular business.

The Rules Committee, which met this afternoon with the Speaker, Mr. G.M.C. Balayogi, in the chair unanimously took the decision in favour of ``automatic suspension'' and authorised the Speaker to lay the report of the committee on the table of the House.

The decision was taken following a meeting of party leaders called by the Speaker last week, where most party leaders favoured changes in the Rules of Procedure to facilitate this punitive measure in the interest of maintaining decorum and upholding the dignity of the House.

It was felt that it was becoming increasingly difficult to ``manage'' the House and ensure orderly behaviour of members and smooth conduct of business.

While taking a serious note of repeated violation of norms by members, the committee noted that any MP who goes into the well of the House or willfully and persistently defies the authority of the chair and obstructs the proceedings on being named by the Chair shall immediately withdraw from the House and will attract ``automatic suspension'' for five consecutive sittings or the rest of the session, whichever is less.

The committee also decided that the MPs should sit in the seats allotted to them and speak from there.

It was observed that members were breaking the decorum by not remaining in their seats and that they had repeatedly failed to appreciate the reasonableness shown by the Speaker, who had often pointed out that disorder and forced adjournments do not serve the purpose of the Opposition as time is lost and important issues of public interest cannot be discussed with seriousness.

The new rule is expected to be incorporated in the Rules of Procedure as Rule 374a. The existing Rules of Procedure, Rule 331(1), allow any member to give notice of an amendment to the recommended changes in rules within seven days of the proposed changes being laid on the table of the House.

Since only four more days remain of the current session, it is expected that the recommended change to allow ``automatic suspension'' of MPs would be laid on the table of the House in the first few days of the winter session. They will then become part of the Rules of Procedure.

The existing Rules 373 and 374, rarely used, deal with the Speaker's power to ask a member to immediately withdraw from the House for the rest of the day for ``disorderly'' conduct, and even suspension for the remainder of the session after the Speaker ``names'' the member.

It is felt that ``automatic suspension'' will make the task of the Chair that much easier, and hopefully, will have a sobering effect on the MPs of the Opposition parties as well as those of the ruling alliance, as even the treasury benches have been guilty of virtually forcing adjournments.

Mulayam to break rule

PTI reports:

In defiance of the proposed rule to suspend members trooping into the well of the Lok Sabha, the Samajwadi Party leader, Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav, said in the House today that he may be the first to break it. Mr. Yadav said it was to raise people's issues that the members were sometimes forced to go into the well of the House.

He received support from Mr. Raghuvansh Prasad Singh (RJD), who said the Opposition was sometimes compelled to go into the well to put across views and this was a ``democratic'' way of registering protest against the Government and should not be disallowed.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : National
Previous : Save our schools, cry Narmada children
Next     : Curfew lifted in Dariapur