Congress leader Manish Tewari has introduced a bill in Lok Sabha that seeks to allow MPs to take an independent stand when voting on bills and motions and free them compulsions of party lines and “whip-driven
tyranny”, while promoting good law-making.
Tewari, who introduced the private member’s bill on Friday last to amend the Anti-Defection Law, said his proposed legislation seeks to flag who has primacy in a democracy – the elector who stands in the sun for hours to elect his or her representative or the political party whose whip the representative becomes the helot of.
This bill has been introduced by Tewari for the third time after 2010 and 2021. It seeks to give parliamentarians the freedom to toe an independent line in voting on bills and motions other than a confidence motion, no-confidence motion, adjournment motion, money bills and financial matters that could affect the stability of a government.
“This bill seeks to return conscience, constituency and common sense to the echelons of the legislature so that an elected representative actually functions as the representative of the people who elected him and not as an instrument of a whip issued by his party, transforming lawmakers into mere lobotomised numbers and dogmatic ciphers responding to a division bell,” he told news agency PTI.
What Does The Bill Propose?
The bill proposes to amend the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution so that a “member should incur the loss of his membership only when he votes or abstains from voting in the House with regard to a confidence motion, no-confidence motion, adjournment motion, money bill or financial matters, contrary to any direction issued in this behalf by the party to which he belongs to, and in no other case.”
“The Chairman or the Speaker of a House shall make an announcement in the House regarding any direction issued by a political party in respect of the aforesaid motions, bill or financial matters, as soon as possible, after such direction has been communicated to him by that political party,” read the bill’s statement of objects and reasons.
It also said the Chairman or the Speaker of House shall also specifically inform the members that the defiance of the direction issued by a political party by any member shall result in automatic cessation of his membership, and that member shall have the right to appeal against the cessation of his membership.
What Are The Objectives Of This Bill?
Tewari says the bill aims to promote legislative choice of parliamentarians and legislators without affecting the stability of the government. “What is happening is when Parliament assembles at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, for government business, there is at times not even a quorum in the House. And in fact, there is an unspoken agreement between the treasury benches and the opposition not to raise the quorum issue so that if at all the House is functioning and it is not disrupted, it can continue,” he said.
He said laws are often pushed through without discussion. “The reason for this, is that parliamentarians do not see a role for themselves in lawmaking,” he argued. “So the law is made by some joint secretary in some ministry. It is brought to Parliament, a minister will read out a prepared statement explaining what it is. Then it’s put to a pro forma discussion and then as a consequence of a whip-driven tyranny, those on the Treasury benches invariably vote for it and those on the opposition benches vote against it.”
The Congress MP said the bill aims to remove the tyranny of the whip and promote good lawmaking. He also remarked that if defections were a retail activity in the 1960s, they became a wholesale activity by the 1990s after the introduction of the anti-defection law and subsequently by the year 2000s, and after 2014 it has become a mega mall activity.
Over the years, Tewari has taken stances that are different from the Congress on many issues, specifically during his inclusion in the BJP-led government’s global outreach initiative after Operation Sindoor.
(with PTI inputs)
