Context:

• Parliament is the temple of Democracy. The legislature needs to keep a check on the executive by means of questions and deliberations.

• As the world faces the toughest battle of COVID-19, Parliament’s activities are suspended. This article speaks about exploring ways of conducting parliamentary meetings.

Role of the Parliament

 • First and foremost, it is the Parliament that checks and challenges the government of the day.

* While introducing the draft Constitution, B.R. Ambedkar explained why the drafting committee had preferred a parliamentary form over the presidential system of governance.

* Over the decades, our Parliament has evolved procedures of accountability including hearings of committees. The fact that Parliament and its committees have not met for over two months indicates the absence of scrutiny of government actions.

Functioning Parliament matters

• National laws are made by Parliament. The current steps by the central government are being taken under the Disaster Management Act, 2005, which was not designed to handle epidemics.

• The reasoning is that the central government had no choice as there was no other law that provided it with powers to impose a lockdown across the country, which was needed to arrest the spread of the disease.

* This misses the point that Parliament, which was meeting till a day before the national lockdown was announced, could have passed an appropriate Act.

• This is what many other countries have done — an Act with suitable checks and an expiry date, which could be renewed by Parliament, if required.

• The Constitution requires all expenditure by the government to be approved by Parliament. The government has announced a series of measures to address the economic crisis sparked by the health crisis and the lockdown. These have not been subject to parliamentary scrutiny or approval.

• From March to May 2020, central and State governments have issued over 5,000 notifications to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. The appropriateness of these circulars need to be examined by Parliament and its committees. Responsibility of MP

• MPs have a duty to shape policy and guide the government in the national interest. They represent the concerns of people by raising issues in Parliament.

• The country is facing serious challenges on many fronts as a consequence of the pandemic. These include addressing questions on how to stall the epidemic from spreading, how to treat people who are infected, and how to minimise the loss of life to the virus.

• There is also the question of how the economy is impacted, both from the supply side due to the lockdown, and from the demand side as incomes and spending contract.

• There have been several news reports of migrants being mistreated, not provided transport, being harassed by the police — and being stripped of their dignity, even in cases where they have been provided with food and shelter.

• There needs to be concerted action to alleviate the distress. Parliament is the forum where such issues should be discussed and a plan of action agreed upon. Practices around the world

• The Canadian Parliament had its first lockdown meeting towards the end of April 2020, with roughly 280 of the 338 Members of Parliament attending through video conference and questioning the government for three hours.

• The British Parliament has adopted a hybrid model of in-person and video attendance.

• Several other countries like France, Italy, Argentina, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand have held sessions either with physical distancing (fewer MPs attend with agreement across parties) or video conferencing or a combination of the two.

• Many others are convening their committees through video-conferencing.

• The Inter Parliamentary Union has documented the processes used by various national parliaments to meet during the pandemic.

• India’s Parliament, which prides itself as the apex representative body of the world’s largest democracy, is a notable absentee from this list. Conducting meetings through video conferencing

• Our Constitution does not prohibit meetings that may require maintenance of physical distancing or remote meetings. It states that the President may summon Parliament “to meet at such time and place as he thinks fit”.

• The Rules of Procedure of both Houses require the Secretary-General to issue summons to each member specifying the “date and place for a session” of the House. These enabling clauses can be used to hold hybrid meetings or remote meetings.

• Rule 267 of the Lok Sabha states that committee meetings have to be held in the Parliament building. However, the Speaker has the powers to change the venue.

• Thus, there is no prior parliamentary action required to permit meetings through video-conferencing. Challenges

• Security is obviously a critical consideration for any application chosen to support the work of parliament.

* Developing internal home-grown tools are one way to mitigate security risks; however, these take time to be put in place. Way forward

• The question of security and secrecy may come up. The meetings of the Houses are usually telecast live, and there is no issue of confidentiality.

• Rule 266 mandates that all committee meetings have to be held in private, this has become a roadblock for videoconferencing.

* This is essentially to protect the confidentiality of the information shared by the government in the meetings. The argument is that it may be difficult to protect confidentiality in virtual meetings, when members function from different places.

* Officials have also cited the inherent problems with technology that could facilitate breaches.

* Given that large global corporations as well as parliamentary committees of several other countries seem to have solved this problem, there is no reason that the Indian Parliament cannot adopt these solutions.

• All district headquarters are linked with fibre optic lines, so even if there is a problem of connecting the constituency office of MPs, they could use such government facilities.

• Parliament can meet, but with restrictions. These restrictions include: fewer sittings of plenary sessions or committees; fewer parliamentarians and staff in the building.

Conclusion

• India prides itself on being the world’s largest democracy as well as the information technology provider to the world. It is imperative that Parliament harness the country’s IT strengths to buttress our credentials as a performing democracy