The 25-day monsoon session of Parliament ended on Thursday amid intense acrimony and extremely poor productivity—using just 15 percent of the scheduled time in the Lok Sabha (17.5 hours) and 33 percent in the Rajya Sabha (37.4 hours). War clouds had gathered weeks before the session following an appalling NEET-UG question paper leak from within the exam system and a massive Gen Z protest in its wake. The situation worsened after heavy-handed action by security forces on the protesters marching to Parliament on July 20, the day the session began. The government strategically accepted all the demands of the protesters, including the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, instead of yielding to opposition pressure on the matter. But the resultant political toxicity kept both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah away from the House floor for almost the entire session. Both attended it for all of four minutes—on the last day, when the full ‘Vande Mataram’ was sung and Lok Sabha adjourned sine die.
The opposition sought to put Shah on the mat by raising the accountability question on the brutal action against protesting students. Shah tried to turn the tables on the session’s penultimate day, challenging the opposition to a debate and promising a detailed reply. But Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, said they were not interested in his “lecture”. The other major debate blocked by the Treasury was on donation theft at the Ayodhya Ram temple.
The only proposal that saw substantive debate was on the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill. The PM had promised to deal with paper leakers ahead of the session. The Lok Sabha debated it for close to 11 hours and the Rajya Sabha for 6.5 hours. Ten other bills were cleared by the Lower House in less than 14 minutes each. The contentious Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill was sent to a joint parliamentary committee for vetting.
The near-total breakdown of the parliamentary system resulted from a complete erosion in trust. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju alone engaged with Rahul, but was unsuccessful in breaking the deadlock and preventing a washout. Constructive dialogue across the aisle is the bedrock of parliamentary democracy. That requires tact, a skill hardly visible in these troubling times.
