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Poor planning and check-marking of the law-making process are the troubling highlights of the budget session of Parliament. These are not new in the highest legislative bodys functioning. But they are now bordering on becoming routine.

Last year, the pandemic derailed parliamentary functioning. So after a hiatus of four months, Parliament convened at the end of January for the budget session. The plan was for the two Houses to meet for 33 days. Instead, the session was cut short to 24 days. Political parties joined hands, asking for curtailing the session to campaign in the upcoming five assembly elections.

Ideally, the parliamentary calendar should be sacrosanct and its dates planned in advance. And this requires planning on part of the government, which is entrusted by the Constitution with convening Parliament. The approximate time-frame of assembly elections is known well in advance. For example, the tenure of the Punjab, Goa and Manipur assemblies will end in March next year. So elections will take place in these states in February and March 2022, clashing with next years budget session. So the dates for the session can be decided now and such planning will ensure that the sittings of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha dont have to be cut short.

Since campaigning was heating up in the second half of the budget session, the benches in the two Houses were empty. Several Members of Parliament (MPs) did not turn up in Question Hour to get responses from government ministers. Average attendance in the Lok Sabha dipped to 71% and in the Rajya Sabha to 74%.

But this careful planning of the parliamentary calendar has been missing in successive governments. In 2001, during the term of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayees government, the budget session was cut short by eight days due to state elections in five states. Again in 2011, the budget session had to be cut short because of state elections during Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs tenure.

Governments legislative business also suffered because of the absence of planning. Last October, when Parliament was not in session and immediate action was required, the government used its ordinance-making power to set up a commission for air quality management for the national capital region. The ordinance was brought in because immediate action was required. But during the budget session, the government missed the deadline for getting parliamentary approval for the commission. As a result, the commission had to be disbanded. The government was also planning to introduce 19 new bills during the session. But, by the end of the session, it could only bring 13 bills before Parliament.

The other worrying aspect of the session was the lack of scrutiny of government legislation in Parliament. Since laws have a large impact on society and address legal and policy issues, they require careful consideration by subject-specific parliamentary committees. A short three-page amendment to the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act passed during the session illustrates this point. Introduced last year in March, it increases the period in which abortions may be carried out to 24 weeks (age of the foetus) . It has implications for abortions for victims of sexual violence after the 24-week period. The law requires abortions to be performed by doctors with specialisation in gynaecology or obstetrics and there is a shortage of such doctors in rural areas. So it also raises the issue of access to safe abortions in rural areas.

Scrutiny by a committee, with inputs from the government and other stakeholders, would have ironed out these issues. So far, in the Lok Sabha, 11% of the bills passed by Parliament were examined by a subject committee. In the budget session, the government turned down multiple demands for sending bills to committees and it took Parliament an average of 10 days to pass the 11 bills.

The session saw Parliament doing a lot of work. But effective legislatures are measured by their outcomes and not by their output. It is time for the government and Opposition parties to prioritise their legislative responsibilities. Because better outcomes are a result of careful planning and robust mechanisms of scrutiny. Such measures will affirm peoples trust in Parliament and strengthen the foundation of our democracy.

Chakshu Roy is the head of legislative and civic engagement, PRS Legislative Research

The views expressed are personal

The rest is here:
How the budget session let down the spirit of parliamentary democracy - Hindustan Times

Let me begin by confessing that I was very impressed with the Prime Ministers passionate speech in West Bengal last week. In answer to the Chief Ministers taunt about outsiders coming to try and snatch the state from Bengalis, he said in thunderous tones, Didi, oh Didi, how dare you stand on the land that Gurudev once walked on and call anyone an outsider! Have you forgotten that it was he who wrote Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravida, Utkal, Banga. Vindhya, Himachal, Yamuna, Ganga, Uchchal jaladhi tiranga. It was well said.

The first votes in this election were cast yesterday. So last week saw the Bharatiya Janata Party send its biggest stars to campaign for what is clearly the most important election of this season. The Home Minister went personally to release the partys manifesto, which he called a sankalp patra or a list of pledges. He pledged to do things for the state that no BJP government has done in the states that it has already won. He pledged that 33% of the seats in the state legislature will be reserved for women. He pledged that the daughters of Bengal will have their education paid for from KG to PG and pledged many other wondrous things that will happen to Bengal if it chooses the BJP over Mamata Banerjees Trinamool Congress. The proverbial icing on the cake came in the form of Yogi Adityanath who mixed religion with politics as only he can and declared that without Ram there can be no India and those who are traitors to Ram have no place in India.

Two things happened as I listened to the Prime Minister and the two men who his devotees already predict will get his job one day. The first was that I marvelled at the passion with which Modis BJP fights elections. No election is too small. Not long ago we saw all the partys major stars descend on Hyderabad to fight a municipal election. And now they fight in West Bengal as if they were fighting for their lives. Assam has had some attention but the elections in southern India have been almost ignored. Amit Shah said Bengal has more seats so we had to come here more.

The second of the things that happened was that I realised that Modis BJP (and it is his alone now) believes that democracy only means winning elections. The current incarnation of the party of Hindutva appears not to have understood at all the deeper meaning of democracy. This deeper meaning is that in between election campaigns the party that wins needs to show its real respect for democracy by strengthening as best as it can the institutions that are the pillars on which democracy stands. On more occasions than can be listed here the Prime Minister has allowed his minions and acolytes to abuse unsupportive journalists in filthy language on social media.

On more occasions than can be listed here we have seen his government crush dissent by jailing dissidents on sedition charges. Sikh farmers who opposed the farm laws have been called secessionists. Muslims who opposed the new citizenship law have been charged with masterminding the riots in Delhi and jailed under preventive detention laws. More recently two celebrated academics resigned from a prestigious private university because they felt their criticism of Modi was harming the institution they worked for.

When things like this happen, the watchdogs of democracy that exist in other democratic countries take notice and so India found its democratic status downgraded to partly free. When the Minister of External Affairs was asked about this at the India Today Conclave South, he said with a sneer that India did not need certificates of democracy from those who have an agenda.

This comment worried me more than almost any made by one of Modis senior ministers because it sounded as if he were the Foreign Minister of China, Turkey or Pakistan. It would diminish India to ever be in that club. If there is one thing we can truly be proud of, it is that we have remained a democracy through times of terrible hardship, poverty and tumult. We have remained a democracy because our leaders have ensured, except during the Emergency, that the pillars that hold up the edifice of democracy have not been damaged.

The Prime Minister has proved that when it comes to winning elections, the BJP that he has reimagined in the past seven years is truly unbeatable. It fights every election, small and big, with the passion he exhibited in the speech he made last week. What he has not done is bring that same passion into preserving the institutions of democracy, after the heat and dust of the campaign settles and the business of governing begins.

It is true that Modi has run welfare schemes and social programmes better than before, but when it comes to allowing what Zulfikar Ali Bhutto once called the noise and chaos of Indias democracy, he has failed. Bhutto hated India but conceded in his last months that it was this noise and chaos that made India a country in which an elected prime minister could not be hanged by a military dictator. The noise and chaos can exist only when it is allowed to.

This article first appeared in the print edition on March 28, 2021 under the title Democracy between elections.

Read more from the original source:
Modis BJP believes that democracy only means winning elections - The Indian Express

The For the People Act of 2021, or H.R. 1, passed the House of Representatives on March 3, 2021. It is before the Senate as S. 1. The bill covers some of the most foundational aspects of American democracy: voting rights, campaign finance, and ethics rules. S. 1 has remained in the news daily because it would counter many of the 253 proposed and rapidly moving state bills in 43 jurisdictions to tighten restrictions on voting.

In addition, Senate filibuster rules, which currently require 60 votes to pass most legislation, appear to pose an obstacle to the bills passage. Some have suggested that consideration of S. 1 may provide an occasion for relaxing those restrictions in whole or in part.

On March 24, Governance Studies at Brookings hosted U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and experts on democracy and Senate procedure as part of a two-panel webinar to discuss S. 1, how it relates to the wave of state legislation around the country, and its likely encounter with the filibuster. Senators Klobuchar and Merkley discussed the bills provisions and how it would affect voting-related state legislation. The second panel addressed those issues in the context of Senate procedure and the various proposals for reconsidering the filibuster.

Viewers submitted questions for speakers by emailing events@brookings.edu or via Twitter at @BrookingsGov by using #ForThePeopleAct.

Read more here:
Voting rights and wrongs: Democracy legislation in the Senate - Brookings Institution

At the turn of the millennium, nu-metal was the biggest scene around. With genre barriers broken down by the explosion of digital downloads, the likes of Linkin Park, Deftones and Limp Bizkit blended electronic music with hard rock, hip-hop, industrial and grunge. Selling hundreds of millions of copies, their angsty records spoke to a generation of kids who realised there was more to music than a single style.

Formed in 1995 when the 14-year-old pianist and singer Amy Lee met 15-year-old guitarist Ben Moody at a Christian Youth camp, Evanescence spent years releasing independent EPs and playing coffee shops around their home state of Arkansas. In 2003 they dropped their debut album Fallen and it swiftly cemented the bands place in that exploding nu-metal scene. A gorgeous blend of gothic cinema, hard rock and classical music, it went on to become one of the biggest selling albums of the 21st Century while lead single Bring Me To Life was a Grammy Award-winning global smash that remains a mainstay of alternative radio to this day. However, the track also features an uncredited guest spot from Paul McCoy who provides the male vorcals.

It was a compromise with the label, who wanted to add a male vocalist to the band full time since they didnt believe in Lee fronting her own band alone. Evanescence pushed back before settling on that one track compromise. Lee was still nervous though. I didnt want people to get the wrong idea. There was always a chance that people were only going to hear that first song and I thought we were better than that.

The people who doubted that pianos or female vocals belonged in rock music were quickly proven wrong when the album did so well, as did its follow-up The Open Door in 2006, despite the complete collapse of the nu-metal scene. The band also survived the sudden departure of Moody over creative differences in 2003 (He went on to form We Are The Fallen with guitarist John LeCompt and drummer Rocky Gray when they left Evanescence in 2007).

I always felt like we stood out in that world but I like to stand out. I always saw our differences as a positive, says Lee, a singular voice in a scene dominated by macho aggression.

View post:
Evanescence's Amy Lee: 'With the fight for democracy, it's time for rock to come back and be on top' - Telegraph.co.uk

Hitting out at the Centre, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Saturday said the bill giving primacy to Delhi's Lieutenant Governor over the elected government, was passed by the parliament to curtail the rights of the AAP-led dispensation.

Terming the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2021 as murder of democracy, he said abolishing the powers of an elected government is against the spirit of democracy.

Earlier the SC had clearly ruled that the elected government is the real head of Delhi.

Modi govt wants to run the country in a fascist manner. Electoral malpractices, horse trading of elected MLAs, and when failing in both, it resorts to passing such a dictatorial bill on the strength of its majority in Parliament. This is how the Modi govt rules, Gehlot said in a series of tweets.

He said the BJP could abolish the powers of any government by bringing such laws if it loses elections in a state.

This dictatorial decision of the Modi govt should be opposed at the national level by rising above the party line, he said.

Accusing the BJP of doing a volte-face, the chief minister said the party had earlier advocated full statehood status to Delhi.

But now they have brought such law. Prime Minister advocates cooperative federalism but in reality, NDA govt is imposing decisions on state governments by enacting such laws, he added.

Speaking at a virtual programme of the state medical education department at his residence, Gehlot said those criticising the government are often branded as anti-nationals.

It is a matter of grave concern for us. Look at the chief election commission, income tax department, ED or the CBI. The agencies are being misused. The country has a challenge and we will have to make people understand, he said.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Gehlot calls GNCTD Bill murder of democracy, move to target AAP govt - Business Standard