Telangana all over again: Parliament adjourned till noon after controvert

he first day of the second week of Winter Session on Monday was once again halted by members of Parliament who are for and against the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.

Rajya Sabha was adjourned for 10 minutes for the first time and then again till 12pm and Lok Sabha till 12pm and after ruckus over Telangana forced speakers of both Houses to stop the proceedings.

Parliament has been continuously disrupted over protests over the Telangana issue turning the first week of the extended Winter Session into a complete washout.

The logjam forced President Pranab Mukherjee to react and who on Monday said that Parliament’s function is to debate, dissent and decide and not get disrupted.

“Parliament is the Gangotri of democracy and if Gangotri is polluted, Ganga cannot be clean. All stakeholders must introspect and follow convention and rules,” he said.

He also reminded parliamentarians of their responsibility and asked them to do “some introspection” over Parliament’s functioning.

The current Lok Sabha is considered to be the least productive with only 165 bills being cleared in the last four years while 126 bills are still pending.

The government has several key bills, including six anti-corruption legislations, listed for business this session, but is unlikely to get support from the non-NDA opposition parties.

Even in the face of opposition attack, the UPA government may prefer to pass the vote on account (VoA) and the interim railway budget on schedule to send out the message that it is keen to run Parliament.

The passage of the interim rail budget is supposed to take place on February 12 and the VoA on February 17.

Government sources told HT if the disruption continued, the Houses might be adjourned on February 19 after the passage of the two items. The original plan was to run the session till February 21.