New Delhi: There will be no ‘Question Hour’, a curtailed ‘Zero Hour’ and no private members’ bills during the upcoming monsoon session of Parliament. This decision was taken Wednesday by the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha secretariats. This no ‘Zero Hour’ policy has prompted opposition leaders to accuse the government of trying to ‘murder democracy’ in the name of the COVID-19 pandemic. They had the government is reducing ‘Parliament to a notice board’.
In separate notifications, the two secretariats also said there will be no breaks as well during the sessions. The session will be conducted September 14 to October 1, and both Houses will function Saturdays and Sundays.
In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, the session will be held in two shifts – 9.00am to 1.00pm and 3.00pm to 7.00pm.
Except for the first day, the Rajya Sabha will sit in the morning shift and the Lok Sabha will sit in the evening, according to the notifications.
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“There will be no Question Hour during the Session. In view of the request of the government owing to the prevailing extraordinary situation due to COVID-19, the Speaker has directed that no day be fixed for the transaction of Private Members’ Business during the Session,” the Lok Sabha Secretariat said in a notification. A similar notification was issued by the Rajya Sabha Secretariat as well.
On the move to dispense with the Question Hour, Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP and Floor Leader in Rajya Sabha Derek O’ Brien said opposition MPs will lose the right to question the government and alleged that the pandemic was being used as an ‘excuse to murder democracy’.
In the past, he said, the Question Hour was dispensed with during sessions of Parliament called for special purposes but the upcoming monsoon session is a ‘regular session’.
According to sources, the government has reached out to the Opposition, sharing its compulsions to not hold the Question Hour in wake of the pandemic.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has called up several opposition leaders, including Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, Biju Janata Dal’s Pinaki Misra and O’Brien.
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor tweeted that he had said four months ago that ‘strongmen leaders would use the excuse of the pandemic to stifle democracy and dissent’.
“The notification for the delayed Parliament session blandly announces there will be no Question Hour. How can this be justified in the name of keeping us safe? Questioning the government is the oxygen of parliamentary democracy. This Govt seeks to reduce Parliament to a notice-board and uses its crushing majority as a rubber-stamp for whatever it wants to pass. The one mechanism to promote accountability has now been done away with,” he tweeted.
The Congress party also tweeted separately that questioning the government is the ‘life-blood of parliamentary democracy’.