Three Bills sent to house panels on last day of Budget Session

NEW DELHI: Under attack for bypassing parliamentary oversight in making legislation, the Modi government appears to have had a change of heart as it referred, of its own volition, three Bills to the relevant standing committees on the last day of the Budget Session.

The three legislations are the National Waterways Bill, the Compensatory Afforestation Bill and the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development (Amendment) Bill. Before this, of the 51 Bills the government had introduced, only seven had been put through this oversight process. The development indicated a change in approach given that these were the only Bills sent to Parliament on the last day of the session, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Till now, the Modi administration has followed a different strategy. The government would introduce a Bill in the Lok Sabha, where it had majority, and get the Speaker to waive reference to the standing committee in order to speed up the legislative process. As per rules, all legislation must be referred to the relevant standing committee unless the Speaker, in consultation with the government, grants an exception.

With virtually no important Bill being referred to standing committees, the Opposition began to raise its voice in the Rajya Sabha where the BJP is short of numbers. As a result the government had to eventually refer almost all important legislations to select committees of the Rajya Sabha. The select committee thus emerged as an alternative forum for parliamentary oversight.

The rethink, according to the sources cited, could also have been prompted by suggestions from smaller parties like the Biju Janata Dal and the Bahujan Samaj Party, who have been telling the government that had Bills been referred to standing committees, opposition parties would not have necessarily united on a demand for select committees in the Rajya Sabha.

Select committees were, in fact, the order of the day until department-specific permanent standing committees were formed in 1993. The idea behind select or joint committees was to provide a platform for stakeholders, other than the government, to also have a say in lawmaking. But by the 1990s, the select committee process was widely regarded as cumbersome. It was in this context that standing committees were set up for each ministry as a more permanent interface with the government and other stakeholders.

Gradually, the number of select or joint committees came down drastically in the past two decades. In the last Lok Sabha, there were barely five select committees from both houses put together. In contrast, there have already been seven select committees and one joint committee formed in the first year of the Modi government.