: Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee referred to the Privileges Committee cases of as many as 32 MPs, mainly from the NDA opposition, reportedly for ‘disorderly conduct’ in the House. A few days later, he withdrew his own move, bringing a disquieting episode to a close. But the question has not been entirely answered: can disorderly conduct of members of the House be considered a breach of parliamentary privilege?
Old-timers would remember that there is nothing unprecedented in the use of the speaker’s whip to discipline recalcitrant members who repeatedly disobey the chair and disrupt the orderly conduct of the proceedings of the House. A precedent that immediately comes to mind is that of March 15, 1989 when as many as 63 members were suspended for the rest of the week for “misbehaviour quite unbecoming of members on the floor of the House”.
The 63 honourable members suspended for such ‘misbehaviour’ included prominent figures like Somnath Chatterjee, V. Kishore Chandra S. Deo, Basudev Acharia, Hannan Mollah, S. Jaipal Reddy, Amar Roypradhan, Vishwanath Pratap Singh and others. Names of leftists, more particularly the communists, were noteworthy. The Congress was in power.
There were, however, some significant differences between the 1989 and 2008 events. The issue then was the demand that the Thakkar Commission Report on the assassination of Indira Gandhi be placed on the table of the House. Action was taken immediately on the floor of the House, by motions moved by the minister of parliamentary affairs, after the chair had named the members. The motions were passed by the House by voice vote. The action was preceded by efforts to resolve the differences through a meeting with the leaders of the opposition and a short adjournment of the House by the deputy speaker. Also, from the statements of the minister of parliamentary affairs, it seemed that the suspension was being done with the consent of the opposition members or on their having asked for it themselves. It was not at any stage treated as an issue involving a breach of parliamentary privilege.
Subhash C. Kashyap
