Any tweaking of the carefully construed parliamentary protocols should anyway be undertaken with extreme caution, since minor changes in rules can impact how MPs interact, how legislations are drafted, presented and debated, thus considerably altering the how the people are benefitted from parliamentary sessions. More specifically, the Question Hour, usually the first hour of a parliamentary sitting, ever since it was being broadcast since 1991, by itself has been a source of greater transparency in how the Parliament, and especially, how the Government, function. MPs have asked questions designed to extract information, data and figures on important political and economic matters of the day, thus allowing for more accountability, as well as leading to pertinent action to address the issues.

Similarly, the Zero Hour is an opportunity for the MPs to bring to light matters of national importance, or those needing urgent attention in their respective constituencies, thereby allowing the Parliament to allocate resources or take appropriate decisions to mitigate concerns. Both the Question Hour and the Zero Hour are times when the MPs operate directly on behalf of the people who have elected them, relaying public grievances and concerns directly to the legislating members of the Government.

While the Question Hour is regulated by comprehensive rules, the Zero Hour is the innovation of parliament in practice. Both these occasions have their constitutional merits and significance, and allow the opposition MPs to keep democracy afloat by questioning the Government of the day. And even though the Question Hour got suspended in the past, those were exceptional circumstances — including a session after the Chinese military attack in 1962, during the Emergency in 1975 and 1976, or during the special sessions of Parliament called to seek vote of confidence (1990 and 2008).

Why should the Question Hour and the Zero Hour be suspended / truncated in lieu of the Covid-19 pandemic when the same didn’t stop the Prime Minister of India from not just attending but indeed performing the main ritual at the laying of the foundation stone in Ayodhya’s controversial Ram Temple in the middle of the global medical crisis? Why should Parliament curtail its functioning citing the coronavirus disease after six months of the virus making its presence felt, even as state assemblies have been conducted with both the Question and the Zero Hours? Why must important aspects of procedures that bolster our deliberative democracy face the axe when the topmost elected members of Parliament don’t feel hemmed in by Covid-19 while attending deeply religious ceremonies despite governing a constitutionally secular multi-religious country?

As States like Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Arunachal Pradesh, among others conduct Assemblies without suspending the Question Hour, are we to understand that the Central government is unable to observe the same precautions needed to allow the Monsoon Session be carried out with the Question and Zero Hours intact? Moreover, at a time when the Government and indeed the Courts of this land can force our students to write the NEET exams despite the pandemic and despite massive student opposition to the same, shouldn’t the same principles be applied to the Parliament and its functioning itself?

It’s deplorable that even though schools and universities are trying their best to carry out their operations online, conducting virtual classes and keeping the students and teachers connected through various apps, India, despite boasting of its digital credentials and cheap data, failed to adapt to the Covid-19 challenge and enable full-fledged virtual Parliament sessions, to ensure that all the aspects of democracy get properly debated. In fact, a combination of on-site and virtual Parliament could have boosted India’s democratic credentials, especially at a time of unprecedented number of Covid-19 cases, plummeting economy with -23.9 per cent growth rate, reeling under the lockdown after already having weathered the shocks of demonetisation and GST from November 2016 onwards.

In addition, the suspension of the Private Members Business is also extremely worrying, since legislation shouldn’t only be a domain of the ruling party, but equally of concern to the MPs from the opposition parties. Every MP is a representative of lakhs and lakhs of people in Parliament and matters of urgency are best communicated to the highest echelon of power by the concerned MP herself. It’s entirely inappropriate that these significant democratic guarantees face the axe while the ruling party and its followers flout pandemic precautions officially as well as unofficially.

In the light of damaging revelations such as the alleged collusion with the social media giant Facebook of the ruling BJP, the questions surrounding the ongoing Indo-China crisis, the curious awarding of permissions to operate crucial sea and airports to industrialists close to the Prime Minister, the disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, among others, it becomes imperative that the Government is subjected to rigorous questioning during the upcoming Monsoon Session of Parliament. In the interest of democracy, tinkering with the Question Hour and the Zero Hour, as well as the Private Members Business, should be discouraged. (IPA Service)