After West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) announced its decision to opt out of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on bills to remove the prime minister, chief ministers and ministers if they are detained or arrested for 30 consecutive days, Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party may also follow suit.
Quoting a source in the Samajwadi Party, news agency PTI reported that the SP is also unlikely to nominate any member to the proposed panel. Notably, senior TMC leader and Rajya Sabha MP Derek O'Brien, in a blog post, has also said that the SP has decided not to nominate any member to the JPC.
The Samajwadi Party is, however, yet to confirm whether it would nominate any member to the JPC.
"The All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) and the Samajwadi Party (SP), the second largest Opposition parties in Parliament, decided not to nominate any of its members to the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) being proposed to examine the Constitution (One Hundred and Thirtieth Amendment) Bill, calling the committee a ‘farce’," he said.
O'Brien hits out at BJP-led NDA for using its 'brute majority'
In his blog post, O'Brien gave several reasons why the TMC has decided not to nominate any member to the JPC. First, he said the chairperson of the JPC is decided by the Lok Sabha Speaker and the Rajya Sabha Chairperson, and its members are nominated as per the strength of each party, which ultimately makes the committee "skewed towards the ruling majority".
Second, the Rajya Sabha MP said there is "no consensus" in every JPC over the final report. He said the "ruling party uses its brute majority" to defeat the amendments proposed by opposition MPs by a "show of hands". "Those in the opposition, holding an alternate view, are outvoted. The only recourse left is to table a dissenting note – for the record," he said.
He further said JPCs were "conceived as democratic and well-intentioned mechanisms", established through motions passed by the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, and they ensured transparency and public accountability. "However, this purpose has eroded significantly post-2014, with JPCs increasingly being manipulated by the government in power," he stressed.
