Indian Parliament

The parliament is the bedrock of our democracy. The proceedings of the parliament have a bearing on our daily lives as it passes important legislations and the annual budget.As the parliament will assble soon after the fresh elections for a budget session, here is what you need to know about Indian parliament.

1. We have a bicameral structure for the parliament as in Britain. That means Indian parliament consists of two houses – the Lok Sabha and the rajya Sabha. There are 545 members in Lok Sabha of which 543 are directly elected by the people( which we recently did) and 2 are nominated by the president. Rajya Sabha or the upper house consists of 245 members of which 233 are elected by MLAs of each state and 12 are nominated by the president. The term of a Lok Sabha member is 5 years and that of a Rajya Sabha member is 6 years.

2. The sessions of Lok Sabha are presided over by Speaker and that of Rajya Sabha are presided over by Chairman who is also the Vice President of India.

3. Each year the president will officially summon the Parliament. We have 3 main sessions of parliament in a year- the budget session, the monsoon session and the winter session.

4. All ordinary business in the house are decided through votes. Ordinary majority( 50% of votes) is sufficient for ordinary matters like certain laws. But for certain matters like amending the constitution, removing the president majority of two- third members of the house is required.

This is how our parliamentshould work. It is designed to be functioning like a stage for debates, dissent and discussion which would take our country forward. Look what it has become now!!!!! The important incidents rarely get a platform. Only one MP from Rajya Sabha raised the issue of Dadri lynching. Tilldate the then ruling party(now also) has not made any official statements regarding the incident. Post Rohith Vula suicide , the then HRD minister gave a fiery speech in Rajya Sabha quoting Hanuman chalisa and no opinions regarding the incident. 33% reservation to Parliament for women is a legislation awaiting action for many years. On the other hand the controversial Citizenship bill gets passed in a go. Majority of the MPs in the two houses have assets in crores and records of criminal proceedings against them . How are they going to represent you, me and a thousands of other people?

We have plenty of reasons to be annoyed with the way parliament has degraded. Rather than being silently annoyed, we can talk/shout/ write our annoyance. May be our letters/voices can make a difference!!!!!!