Speaker clips wings of legislation-happy MPs

Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, December 6

For the first time in the recent parliamentary history, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla has halted legislation-happy MPs in their tracks.

In a major amendment to House rules that allow MPs to move private members’ legislations, the Speaker has barred one member from moving more than three Bills per session.

Top LS sources today told The Tribune that a whopping 300 private members’ legislations were pending for debate in the House with no existing restrictions on the number of Bills an MP can move. 

“There are MPs who have moved more than 10 to 20 Bills in a session adding to the backlog. Since these are private Bills LS secretariat has to take care of their drafting and printing. It’s an arduous job and takes time and House resources,” said a source in the Lok Sabha secretariat.

Apart from this, the Speaker through amendments to rules has made another major change which says one MP will now be allowed to move not more than 10 cut motions to the demand for grants of a given ministry.

“There has been a practice of a single MP moving as many as 30 cut motions. This engages a whole lot of time of the LS secretariat as well as the House. Each cut motion has to be printed. With the new amendments to Speaker’s directions, MPs will move only those cut motions as are absolutely essential to the subject matter at hand.” said a top LS source.

The amended orders of the Speaker say — in case an MP moves more than three private members legislations in a session only the first three he has moved would be listed as accepted.

Likewise, only the first 10 cut motions would be listed in case of a member moves more than 10.