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Somnath steps for smooth session

NEW DELHI: Ahead of the Parliament winter session, beginning on Thursday, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee has decided to rein in members to ensure smooth proceedings.

At a meeting on Wednesday, he urged members not to give room for invoking “stringent rules.”

“I hope there won’t be any occasion to use stringent rules to discipline members,” Mr. Chatterjee told the meeting attended among others by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The “stringent rules” provided in the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Lok Sabha pertain to withdrawal and suspension of members.

He has decided to restrict the number of mentions during zero hour to five urgent issues to be decided by the Chair.

All other issues that members would like to raise will be allowed at 6 p.m. This was apparently agreed upon by leaders at a meeting last year but the Speaker had not enforced it. With zero hour mentions becoming prolonged as members insist on their issue being taken up, he has decided to implement this measure.

To ensure that more questions can be taken up during question hour, the Speaker has decided that only four supplementaries will be permitted per question unless it is a burning issue.

This is being done to ensure that the effort put in by the government machinery to prepare for Parliament questions does not go waste.

On most days, not more than six of the 20 questions listed for oral replies can be taken up because of a large number of supplementaries.

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