Dark pepper at noon

By:Somasekhar Sundaresan

The SC did not get tempted to rule because misconduct inside Parliament is outside its domain

It was December last year. Almost presciently, the Supreme Court was faced with a writ petition seeking a direction to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha to suspend all privileges to Members of Parliament who disrupt the works of Parliament. The Supreme Court rightly refused.
Little would one have known that in just a few weeks, Parliament would witness unprecedented misconduct. First, a member of the Lok abha used pepper spray in the House in an attempt to disrupt proceedings to discuss a law that would split Andhra Pradesh.
A few days later, the Lok Sabha passed that very law just when all cameras failed to capture what happened for just the 90 minutes in which the law got passed, leaving no visual record of what transpired. Each was an act of anarchy, and evidenced a break down in the sanctity of how Parliament conducts business.
Yet, the Supreme Court was right in its December decision, when it ruled that it would have no jurisdiction to interfere. Judicial review can indeed check the constitutional validity of a law passed by the Parliament. If the law were in conflict with the Constitution, it could be struck down as unconstitutional. However, misconduct by the law-makers, including the Speaker, within the precincts of the Parliament is outside the domain of the Supreme Court.
Quoting two precedents, the Supreme Court said, in relation to maintenance of order in the House: “The Speaker is the guardian of the privileges of the House and its spokesman and representative upon all occasions. He is the interpreter of its rule and procedure, and is invested with the power to control and regulate the course of debate and to maintain order.” On lawfulness in the conduct of work in the Parliament, the court said: “It is the right of each House of Parliament to be the sole judge of the lawfulness of its own proceedings.
The Courts cannot go into the lawfulness… The Constitution aims at maintaining a fine balance between the legislature, executive and judiciary. The object of the constitutional scheme is to ensure that each of the constitutional organs function within their respective assigned sphere.”
Nothing could have prepared one for what would transpire in February. It is the provocative nature of facts in a given case that leads to bad case law being laid down. To do justice, courts tend to bend the law. The Supreme Court did not get tempted to make a judgement on the issue because it had directed the Speaker to do her job well. Even if the same writ petition were to be heard today, that would have been the only right thing for the court to do.
If members of the Lok Sabha are unruly, it is for the Speaker to pull up her socks and crack the whip to ensure discipline. However, the Speaker is a human being. Like with all public offices, they too are exposed to human frailties. Some Speakers have raised the stature of their office (read, GV Mavalankar and Somnath Chatterjee) while the stature of many other Speakers has been lifted by fact that they held the Speaker’s office (read, the current incumbent).
Defending how the law to divide Andhra Pradesh was passed in the Lok Sabha, P Chidambaram, the senior cabinet minister in the UPA government, in an interview with a television channel asked: “If twelve people are allowed to disrupt the Lok Sabha day after day after day, is that democratic?” It is a question he would well ask the Speaker, whose job is more than to deal with unruly Parliamentarians and ensure misconduct of business.
The minister defended the passage of the law without video recording of what transpired (and that too by a “voice vote”) with: “A hundred journalists were present. All that is lacking is images of what transpired. Therefore, it is only television channels like yours that should be aggrieved.”
That a cabinet minister of the government is fielded to defend the failure of the Lok Sabha’s television system, which is entirely meant to be under the control of the Speaker, shows how aligned the Speaker’s office is with the government. It is the Speaker who has to explain what went wrong.
Some reports say the Speaker has ordered a probe, while others say the Speaker directed the cameras to be switched off. It is the Speaker who has the full freedom and autonomy to run Doordarshan’s Lok Sabha TV channel. If only the fine balance between the executive government and the legislature that the Supreme Court alluded to, were to be honoured, wide-eyed romantics would not approach the judiciary to direct the Speaker to do her job.