In absence of Parliament session, social activists start consultation on key policy issues

Jan Sarokar, a conglomeration of social organisations, has started a virtual consultation this week on 10 themes with over 200 speakers

Updated on: Aug 19, 2020, 15:51:48 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Chetan Chauhan

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Several social organisations have come together to discuss key policy issues from education to environment through People’s Parliament in the absence of regular sessions of legislative bodies in the country.

The monsoon session of Parliament has been delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. (Raj K Raj/HT Photo)

Jan Sarokar, a conglomeration of social organisations, has started a virtual consultation this week on 10 themes with over 200 speakers.

Launching the initiative, former National Advisory Council member Aruna Roy said that since there has been no Parliament session for the last five months, there has been no parliamentary oversight of the executive either.

The monsoon session of Parliament has been delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the secretariats of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha intend to hold the session in September while enforcing social distancing norms.

As per Constitutional norms, there cannot be a gap of over six months between two Parliament sessions. Officials said they have until September 23 to hold the session. The budget session ended on March 23, two days before the 68-day national lockdown kicked in.

“This (not holding the Parliament session) shocks us as Parliament is a platform to discuss the pandemic at multiple levels,” Roy said.

She said that in the absence of the Parliament session, important policy decisions such as an amendment in labour and agriculture laws and the introduction of changes to education and environment policy were being taken without Parliamentary oversight.

“There is no accountability of those in power,” she said.

In his inaugural speech, former Delhi High Court judge AP Shah, said several countries across the world such as Brazil, Italy and France had held Parliament sessions during the pandemic, providing a voice to the people, but India had failed to do so.

“During the 1962 and 1971 wars, Parliament sessions were held. Even a day after the Mumbai attack, Parliament met. If parliamentary standing committees can meet virtually, why can’t Parliament sessions be held,” he said.

Shah said Parliament was intended to keep a check on the executive. If Parliament stops working, it “compounds the problem of leadership” as it allows the executive free hand, he said. He also claimed that constitutional institutions have been weakened and the civil society stifled in the recent past.

“Our aim should be to revive liberal democratic values of our democracy,” he said.

Jignesh Mewani, a Dalit rights activist and an independent MLA in Gujarat assembly, said that as an MLA he was unable to raise important issues that affect the people as the Gujarat assembly session has not been held in the past five months.

“I could have raised questions regarding the non-availability of life-saving injections in government-run hospitals in Gujarat and the government could have been made accountable. In the absence of the assembly session, I can’t raise my voice,” he said.

Mewani also said that the way changes in labour and agriculture laws have been introduced during the pandemic shows that the government has tried to push an executive agenda without legislative checks and balances.

Nikhil Dey of National Campaign for People’s Right to Information said the Janata Parliament was being held to raise people-centric issues during the pandemic and to ensure that the voice of poor and needy reaches the government.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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