New Delhi: In major changes aimed at better functioning, Lok Sabha has amended rules to prevent collapse of the Question Hour.
It has also sought to break from the past practice of banning MPs from wearing badges by now permitting them to wear tricolour in the House.
Emulating the Rajya Sabha, which recently amended rules to ensure uninterrupted proceedings during Question Hour, the Lok Sabha Rules Committee has agreed that all listed questions must be taken even if the member who tabled it was absent.
"If on a question being called it is not asked or the member in whose name it stands is absent, the Speaker may direct that the answer to it be given," the Committee has
said.
The Committee also took a series of decisions to ensure that the proceedings of the House were not stalled for some reasons.
Amending the Rule 39(3), the Committee said that if the Question Hour on any day is dispensed with for any reason, the answers to questions included in the lists of questions
for oral as well as written answers for the day shall be deemed to have been laid on the Table by the ministers to whom such questions are addressed and shall form part of the proceedings of the day.
If the House does not continue with its sitting after dispensing with the Question Hour, the answers for oral as well as written answer for that day shall be deemed to have been laid on the Table after the Question Hour at the next sitting of the House and shall form part of the proceedings of that day, it said.
Through another amendment, the Committee said that a question not reached for oral answer may be answered after the end of the question hour with the permission of the Speaker if the Minister represents to the Speaker that the question is one of the special public interest to which he desired to give a reply.
In order to put Question Hour to maximum use, the Rajya Sabha Rules Committee had recently amended the rules under which even if the mover of the question was absent, it would be taken up.
Under this initiative, if the main questioner is absent, the Chair will allow three other members to put supplementaries during Question Hour, considered an important avenue to get the government`s response on various issues.
In the last Winter Session, Question Hour in the Lok Sabha collapsed on November 30 when 28 members who had given notices for questions were absent.
In order to honour the national flag, the Rules Committee of the Lok Sabha has made an exception and allowed members to wear tricolour as a lapel pin.
The Committee, which met for the first time yesterday after the new Lok Sabha commenced, has amended the rule 349 under which the MPs shall not wear badges of any kind in the House except the national flag in the lapel pin.
Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari had last year streamlined proceedings during Zero Hour by restricting members to raise their mentions only for three minutes after which the microphone will go off.
PTI
