{"id":36246,"date":"2018-11-02T11:28:50","date_gmt":"2018-11-02T05:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=36246"},"modified":"2018-11-02T11:28:50","modified_gmt":"2018-11-02T05:58:50","slug":"bring-the-house-up-to-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/bring-the-house-up-to-date\/","title":{"rendered":"Bring the House up to date:\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/todays-paper\/tp-opinion\/bring-the-house-up-to-date\/article19255053.ece\"><b>Bring the House up to date<\/b><\/a><b>:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Finding a balance between parliamentary privileges and fundamental rights <b>Context<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In Indian parliamentary democracy, Parliament enjoys almost supreme powers where legislators face no peril from the government.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As matter of fact, such privileges have become an instrument in the hands of the ruling party.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Karnataka Assembly case<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Karnataka assembly speaker K.B. Koliwad has sentenced Ravi Belagere of Hi Bangalore and Anil Raj of Yelahanka Voice for a year in jail for writing defamatory articles against legislators.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hi Bangalore in the year 2014 and said to have \u2018defamed\u2019 Koliwad and another congress leader B.M. Nagaraju, and in 2016, Yelahanka Voice defamed BLP\u2019s S.R.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><\/li>\n<li>Vishwanath in one of their article.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The case revived the debate about the prerequisite for codifying privileges and giving superiority to a citizen\u2019s right to free speech over legislative privileges.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>The required rethinking<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India\u2019s legislators\u2019 freedom of speech like the freedom of speech of citizens should be subjected to the sovereignty and integrity of the nation, public order, friendly relations with foreign states, incitement of an offence or defamation as mentioned in Article 19(2).<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Indian citizen have a constrained right to free speech whereas their representatives have an absolute freedom of speech in the Houses.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even if one may reluctantly allow such a privilege in the interest of the smooth conduct of the House, the power to send people to jail for the breach of privileges does not get justified.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Indian legislators getting to be sole judge and rewarding punishment clearly impinges on constitutionalism.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Where does the fault lie?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The obsolete law on Parliamentary privileges bore the burden of the issue.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The constitution lacks the proper definition of legislative privileges.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Articles 105 and 194 clearly says that the \u201cpower, privileges and immunities of the legislature shall be as may from time to time be defined by the legislature, and until so defined, shall be those of the House of Commons.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The expression \u201cuntil so defined\u201d does not mean an absolute power not to define privileges at all.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Legislators keep the argument burning that codification of privileges will harm the sovereignty of Parliament.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The criticism lies at legislatives covering up corruption behind privileges.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Indian legislators also have protection from arrest in civil cases 40 days before the session, during the session and 40 days after the session.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The exemption from arrest is also available for meetings.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Counting the days of three Parliamentary sessions and meetings then Indian MPs have protection from arrest for more than 365 days in a year.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Comparison of Indian Parliament with British House of commons<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The fault lies in the comparison of India parliament with that of British.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Placing Indian Parliament on a par with the British House of Commons is wrong.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Indian legislatures and British Parliament differ not merely as regards their general political status but also in the matter of legal powers.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The codification of privileges is basically resisted because it would make the privileges subject to fundamental rights.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Once subjected to fundamental rights, privileges won\u2019t be able to put forth for judicial scrutiny.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Which would also result in no evolution of new privileges.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Acts and utterances defamatory of British Parliament or its members are no more treated as privilege questions.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The U.S. House of Representative has been working smoothly without any penal powers for well over two centuries.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Australia too codified privileges in 1987 whereas Indian parliament still continue to curtailing freedom of speech and rewarding punishments.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bring the House up to date:\u00a0 Finding a balance between parliamentary privileges and fundamental rights Context In Indian parliamentary democracy, Parliament enjoys almost supreme powers where legislators face no peril from the government. As matter of fact, such privileges have become an instrument in the hands of the ruling party. Karnataka Assembly case Karnataka assembly&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/bring-the-house-up-to-date\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Bring the House up to date:\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}