Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday said the disruption of proceedings amount to contempt of the House, and disruptors can’t claim it as their privilege to do so. Naidu’s comments come on the backdrop of a major ruckus on the last day of the monsoon session of the Parliament. An enquiry panel is likely to probe the incident.
“Disruption of proceedings amount to contempt of the House, by the logic of which disruption cannot be claimed as a privilege by errant members,” Naidu said.
Delivering the second Ram Jethmalani Memorial Lecture on “Is the disruption of parliamentary proceedings an MP’s privilege and/or a facet of parliamentary democracy?”, Naidu described various rules and other provisions for maintaining a certain standard of behaviour of MPs.
He pointed out that after the Upper House started recording productivity in 1978, it saw 100% functioning till 1996 – an achievement that was repeated only in 1998 and 2009. Naidu also added that the productivity of Rajya Sabha during 2004-14 has been about 78%, and it declined to about 65% since then, an indication that the House performed better when the BJP was in the Opposition rather than the Congress.