Question

Watch the live telecast proceedings of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha on the national channel Doordarshan and write your observations.

Answer 1

Parliament of India is the highest legislative body of India. Our country is a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic with a parliamentary system of government. It consists of two Houses – Lok Sabha (House of the People) and Rajya Sabha (Council of States). The President of India has the power to call the two Houses of Parliament or to dissolve the Lok Sabha.

It is very difficult for a common man to understand the bureaucrat proceedings in parliament. The official proceedings and terms are also complicated. But parliamentary debates are witty, reasonable and simple to watch. Therefore it is important to understand the basic details of both the houses of parliament.

The Rajya Sabha

• Meaning of Rajya Sabha is the “Council of States” and it is the upper house of the Parliament of India.

• Membership is limited to 250 members, 12 of whom are chosen by the President of India (nominated members) for their expertise in specific fields of art, literature, science, and social services.

• The remaining members are elected by state and territorial legislatures.

• Terms of office are for six years and one-third of the members facing re-election every two years.

The Lok Sabha

• Lok Sabha is composed of representatives of the people chosen by direct election.

• The maximum strength of the House predicted by the Constitution is 552 which is made up by election (530 members represent state, 20 members represent union territories, 2 Anglo-Indian community),

The observations of the proceedings from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are:

• The meeting is in the central Hall for Joint Sittings of both the Houses in the Parliament house.

• The Speaker acts as both the judge of each discussion in both the houses.

• A debate round has two teams consisting of two debaters each and a Speaker.

• “Speaker” always shows the power to judge from the neutral point of view. The opinions, statements and tick-offs of the speaker is without any partialities to ruling class or opposition. One team represents the Government, while the other represents the Opposition.

• The Government team is composed of a Prime Minister, who has the opportunity to speak twice, and a Member of Government, has to speak once. But in the current session Prime Minister was absent as he was in a tour. The Opposition team is composed of a Leader of the Opposition, who has the chance to speak twice, and a Member of the Opposition, who speaks once.

• The question hour is at 11am (for an hour) in both the houses. The proceedings began. The Government proposes a specific case statement and the government team demonstrates it correctly.

• The Opposition does not propose anything. They demonstrate that the case statement is wrong.

• Arguments and discussions are carried by representatives of the opposition and ruling government.

• Finally, the Speaker decides at the end of the round, whether the Government confirms its case or whether the opposition invalidates it. The team which met its trouble more is the opposition and thus the ruling party convincingly wins. These are totally based on the arguments made in the round.

2.33 P.M. 15. Government Bill - Passed        The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Bill, 2018                                    Time Taken : 5 Hrs. 51 Mts.       The motion for consideration of the Bill was moved by Shri Thaawar Chand Gehlot.      The following members took part in the debate :- Shri Mallikarjun Kharge Shri Vinod kumar Sonkar Dr. K. Gopal Dr.Tapas Mandal Smt. Rita Tarai Shri Arvind Ganpat Sawant Dr. Ravindra Babu Pandula  Shri Balka Suman Shri Jitendra Chaudhary Shri Tariq Anwar Shri Upendra Kushwaha Shri Dharmendra Yadav Smt. Geetha Kothapalli Shri Chirag Paswan Dr. (Prof.) Kirit Pemjibhai Solanki Shri Prem Singh Chandumajra

The above picture is the example of one of the printed documents about the debates in parliament .

During the Parliamentary debates, a respective member rises to ask a question or put in a short statement and the following procedures are observed:

• The debater before the talk rises from his or her seat, places one hand on top of the head and extends the other arm to show signs that he or she has a point of discussion. His/Her talk is called the Point of Information (POI)

• The debater or the person who is talking chooses to identify the point or not. The debater simply says “No thank you,” or waves the questioner off. But the questioner from opposition party did not sit down. He slightly interrupted the session.

• Later, the debater who is speaking recognizes the point, and allows the man from opposition to talk on his point of discussion

• In between, debater who speaks does not recognize the point of opposition immediately. She just left the questioner stand until it is convenient for her. Later she indicated to explain the opposition’s point of view.

• Some debaters ask a special form of POI called a point of clarification. It is because debater does not understand the case or a particular argument. The speaker tries to answer the doubt and gives explanation to ensure a confusion-free debate round. When some parliamentarians starts to raise their loud noises the speaker warns them and asks not to abuse the idea of debate and commands not to ask too many clarification questions.

• Together with the serious discussion, there is also funniness and humour in the debates.

• At the end of the day of sitting, the Lok Sabha & Rajya Sabha secretariats came up. They have with them two bulletins. The first bulletin is the summary of the day’s proceedings. The second bulletin is on the important announcements provided during the day.

These are the observations of the sessions in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. These proceedings in the parliament houses are very important in building up the democratic nature of our constitution. There is no one man rule. The decisions are taken by the healthy debates and the representatives act as the tongue for common people.