Britain is planning to do away with the House of Lords in its Parliament as per a news report. I believe that our Parliament (among a lot of things) is based on the British system. Is it time we looked at doing away with our Rajya Sabha? There used to be two houses in the Andhra Pradesh legislature. When N T Rama Rao was the Chief Minister he did away with the upper house (the legislative council) and now there is only the legislative assembly. There are still legislative councils in a few other states in India today. The vallue that is added by the Parliament is suspect anyway :P It costs lakhs to run the Parliament for a day and everyone knows how well our Parliament (dis)functions.
An interesting point is that abuse of expenses has been given as a reason for the aforementioned decision. Will such accountability be present in India as far as our legislators are concerned? There have been news reports that the government's austerity drive might end soon. Should our "leaders" be circumspect about their expenses only when the going is tough? There were riots yesterday in Bengaluru about allocation of tickets for municipality elections. Imagine the amount of money that must be up for grabs through the posts of these "people's representatives". I am not foolish enough to say that we must do away with our legislature. I am just curious if it is feasible to do away with the Rajya Sabha.
UPDATE: My friend Sasanka tells me that AP still has a legislative council. He says that the current CM is a member of this and not of the assembly. I stand corrected. By the way I believe Rama Rao initially thought it was not useful and he also wanted money for his kilo-rice-for two-rupees scheme.
An interesting point is that abuse of expenses has been given as a reason for the aforementioned decision. Will such accountability be present in India as far as our legislators are concerned? There have been news reports that the government's austerity drive might end soon. Should our "leaders" be circumspect about their expenses only when the going is tough? There were riots yesterday in Bengaluru about allocation of tickets for municipality elections. Imagine the amount of money that must be up for grabs through the posts of these "people's representatives". I am not foolish enough to say that we must do away with our legislature. I am just curious if it is feasible to do away with the Rajya Sabha.
UPDATE: My friend Sasanka tells me that AP still has a legislative council. He says that the current CM is a member of this and not of the assembly. I stand corrected. By the way I believe Rama Rao initially thought it was not useful and he also wanted money for his kilo-rice-for two-rupees scheme.
1 comment:
Dr.Manmohan Singh can no longer be PM then... And with an electorate like india, I think RS is important..
and FYI AP now has legislative council too.. otherwise Rosaih can longer be a CM :-)
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