National

`Members should adhere to rules of the House'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JULY 14. The Rajya Sabha Chairman, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, today expressed his anguish over the members' failure to adhere to the rules and procedures of the House. He said he planned to convene an all-party meeting to ascertain whether the rules have to be changed. If not, he would request the party leaders to persuade their members to go by the rules while raising issues in the House.

Mr. Shekhawat made the observation after Opposition members disrupted question hour and forced an adjournment to demand the arrest of the Coal Minister, Shibu Soren, on the basis of a press report alleging that a Jharkhand court had declared him a proclaimed offender.

Reacting to the Opposition demand, Nilotpal Basu and Dipankar Mukherjee (both CPI-M), wanted to know whether the rules were being followed while demanding a statement from the Government on the basis of a press clipping.

To this, Mr. Shekhawat said: "I am very unhappy. I have spoken to Pranab Mukherjee and others. No side is respecting rules and precedents. All of you should sit together and, if necessary, change the rules."

Arun Jaitley (BJP) sought to know whether the Prime Minister knew that a member of his Union Cabinet was a proclaimed offender and whether the President was aware that he had administered the oath of office to one. However, the Union Home Minister, Shivraj Patil, pointed out that a proclaimed offender is one who is absconding. Mr. Soren, on the other hand, mentioned the case in his election affidavit, contested the elections and is moving around in public. "Therefore, to call him a proclaimed offender would be wrong," he said.

As soon as Mr. Patil ended the clarification, Mr. Dipankar Mukherjee asked whether a press clipping could be treated as the basis for seeking a clarification from the Government. If that was the case, he said question hour would have to be suspended every day.

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