Yet another short session, Haryana placed at bottom in average sittings

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 22

Yet another short session of the Haryana Assembly came to an end. This time, the session lasted for a single day and was a completely lacklustre event.

The Assembly session began at 11 am on Monday and was adjourned sine die about 1.30 pm on the same day, though the legislators attended the two-day orientation programme for the next two days till today.

The Assembly session that ended on Monday had no zero hour, no question hour, no calling attention motion and no adjournment motions.

“We wanted the session to last three or four days so that the newly elected legislators could get some opportunity of participating in debates, but the government was in no mood to extend the session beyond one day,” said the Leader of Opposition, Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

Kanwar Pal Gujjar, Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Haryana, however, said it was due to constraint of time.

“Had we gone ahead with the Governor’s address, the members would have spent half the day on its discussion. But now, they will get two full days during the upcoming budget session,” Gujjar added. Haryana has a very dismal record when it comes to holding sittings of the state Assembly or passing important Bills – in fact, the state comes at the bottom among all state Assemblies in the country. A report by PRS Legislative Research on the functioning of the state Assemblies suggests that Haryana has the lowest average of sitting days among all state Assemblies of the country.

The report based on 20 state legislatures over 2011 to 2015 reveals that about half the states worked for an average of 30 days or less in a year.

Kerala had the highest average sitting days of 48, while Haryana had the lowest average of 12 sitting days in a year. During this period, Parliament sat for 69 days in a year. Even a smaller state like Himachal Pradesh, which held a 21-day budget session followed by a 4-day non-budget session four months later in 2012, has a better record than Haryana.

When it comes to passing Bills, the Haryana Assembly again does not have a very good record. The Haryana Vidhan Sabha passed 14 Bills within 90 minutes during its August 2016 session.

Another report by the PRS Legislative Research for the Haryana Assembly from 2009 to 2014 said it had passed 129 Bills, all of which were passed on the same day they were introduced.