Research facilitities must for lawmakers: Jaitley

Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley today stressed the need for adequate research facilities for Parliamentarians to improve the quality of debates in the two Houses of Parliament.

Debates needed to be well thought out, without playing to populism. But at times, parties nominated speakers at very short notice who could not make the necessary preparation, he said while addressing a workshop on Parliament and the Media here.

Further, members were genuinely crippled by lack of facilities at the time of preparation and required plenty of back-up support to prepare for debates, particularly individual members, so as to avoid filibustering. Describing the Question Hour as a test of ministerial competence, he said from his own experience he found he needed at least an hour of preparation to answer a fellow member's queries.

But the Question Hour was not an adverserial session. In fact, due to live telecast of proceedings, fumbling in replying became more apparent. Describing the Zero Hour as the "heart and soul" of Parliament, the BJP leader warned that the commotion was a "double-edged weapon" which added to the sound and fury of democracy but also made the public cynical. Terming as inadequate the number of days that Parliament sat, he felt the need to extend the days to 100 days in a session to finish legislative business. Mr Jaitely said a big error was to calculate the amount of legislation passed during a parliamentary. In this regard, he expressed the urgent need to set up an institution to impart training in the art of legislative drafting. Speaking on the issue of Parliamentary privileges, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan K Bansal said it had evoked much debate. While it was a special prerogative given to legislators to enable them to discharge their duties, a Member of Parliament did not enjoy blanket immunity or was above the law. The privileges he enjoyed as an MP he should remember were as the representatative of the people, the Minister clarified. He said Parliament had been liberal about the breach of privilege cases and on many occasions the matter had been closed and not pursued further.

On the possibility of throwing open standing committee meetings to the press, the Minister felt the sheer logistics and need for confidentiality prevented this from occurring.

"If reported, per se the quality of debates could be compromised," he warned participants of the two-day workshop that concludes tomorrow.

-- (UNI) -- 05DI28.xml

Viewer's Comment

Comments Not Available

More Stories