New Delhi, Aug 31 (IANS) Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar Tuesday expressed concern over the ‘alarming’ trend of disrupting parliamentary proceeding and asked political parties to ponder over the ‘irreparable’ damage done to parliamentary democracy.
‘We lost 45 hours of time due to interruptions and forced adjournments. Parliament is meant for debates and discussions. But the trend of disrupting the proceedings days on end is alarming,’ Meira Kumar said, adjourning the house sine die.
She cautioned that if this trend was not checked, it ‘will ultimately lead to unforeseen consequences’.
Political parties, she said, ‘should seriously ponder over the irreparable damage being done to parliamentary democracy by such disruptions.
‘I call upon all concerned to resolve to preserve the sanctity of parliament. Let informed debates and discussions take place inside the chamber at all time instead of slogans and mock discussions.’
She said the monsoon session saw the disposal of important financial, legislative and other business.
During the Session, 18 bills were introduced and 20 were passed.
During the session, 460 starred questions were listed, of which 46 questions could be answered orally.
‘Thus, on an average, about 1.91 questions could be answered per day,’ the speaker said.
‘Written replies to the remaining starred questions along with 5,283 unstarred questions were laid on the table. Unfortunately, the question hour was disrupted on 11 days and questions listed on those days could not be answered by the ministers concerned orally.’
About 314 matters of urgent public importance were raised by the members.
As many as 57 statements were made by ministers on various other important subjects.
Twenty-four Private Members’ Bills were introduced during the session.
