Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla said on January 9 that planned disruptions are detrimental to the spirit of democracy and incidents of compromising the dignity of the House call for tough measures.
Mr. Birla made the remarks after inaugurating a two-day orientation programme for new Madhya Pradesh MLAs at the State Assembly here.
“In the last few years, the number of sittings as well as productivity of legislatures has decreased, on account of increasing incidents of House adjournments due to disruption and commotion,” Mr. Birla said. Some degree of disagreement, noise and uproar is natural on the floors of the House, but often heated debates result in disorder and chaos, leading to loss of time and resources which only reduces the credibility of legislatures among the people, he said.
‘Not a good tradition’
“This new tradition has started to create disruptions in the Assembly Houses. Many a time, the Lok Sabha and the Assembly Houses are disrupted without any logic or debate, only for adjournments. This is not a good tradition and we should make attempts to end this tradition,” he said, asking the representatives to promote meaningful and constructive discussions in the House.
“When every sincere effort is made for active participation of members in House proceedings, incidents of compromising the dignity of the House call for tough measures. Differences of opinion should not be translated into obstructing business of the House,” he said.
Mr. Birla also said that no Speaker or presiding officer likes to suspend members but the dignity of legislature cannot be compromised. “We try to maintain the dignity of the House,” he said.
During the just-concluded Winter Session of Parliament, 100 MPs from the Lok Sabha and 46 MPs from the Rajya Sabha were suspended over protests on the security breach issue.
Speaking at the event, Leader of the Opposition in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly and Congress MLA Umang Singhar said the number of House sittings had reduced in the past few years, depriving the members of opportunity to raise their issues.
“There was a time when there was a fear in the Assembly that if a question is asked, the officials were bound to give the right answer and the government also used to responsibly give justice in favour of the MLAs,” said Mr. Singhar.
Organised by the Parliamentary Research and Training Institute for Democracies (PRIDE), Lok Sabha Secretariat, in collaboration with the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly Secretariat, the two-day programme will see legislators and experts discuss various subjects on House functioning.
