Inconvenient words and expunction in Parliament

Expunging unparliamentary remarks is a norm, but recent events in Parliament are calling into question the integrity of the provision

The Chair ordering the deletion — or expunction — from legislative records of words or remarks made during the proceedings of the House by one or several of its legislators is familiar enough. But the proceedings of the recently-concluded leg of the Budget session had the Opposition accuse Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar of rank partisanship for ordering the expunging of Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge's allegations made in the context of investment research firm Hindenburg Research's report on the Adani Group. The controversy has cast a shadow on the rights of an MP to raise issues of public importance involving members of the executive.

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The Opposition complained that Birla and Dhankhar ordered the expunction of Rahul Gandhi's 18 remarks and Kharge's eight, including a poem, from the records of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, respectively. However, none of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks during his chest-thumping speech, which the Opposition thought to be derogatory, were expunged. "The PM directly insults me. He asks why is your surname Gandhi and not Nehru. But his words are not taken off the record. But it does not matter because the truth always comes out," Rahul Gandhi said in Wayanad last week.

According to the rules of parliamentary procedure, the Lok Sabha Speaker and the Rajya Sabha Chairman have discretionary powers to expunge legislators' remarks they consider improper, unparliamentary and accusatory. On February 8, Dhankhar expressed displeasure with Kharge's reference to the PM and a conglomerate in his speech during the motion of thanks to the President's address. The Rajya Sabha Chairman asked Kharge to authenticate his claims with documents. Kharge shot off a letter a day later, arguing that Parliament is a platform to fix the Executive's accountability. He said any direction or rule of the House could not subvert the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of speech mandated for MPs through Article 105 of the Constitution.

"It would be an inversion of the system of governance if Opposition members are expected to carry out the complete investigation, gather evidence and then raise the matter on the floor of the House," Kharge, also the Congress president, said. The arrangement, he said, is that the Opposition MP raises issues on the basis of inputs from the media, reports in the public domain or even confidential personal information. "The member, after due diligence, draws the attention of the House to such issues, and it is incumbent upon the government to investigate the matter and take appropriate action in consonance with the law of the land," he said.

Norms

Former Lok Sabha secretary general P D T Achary says the Chair expunging unparliamentary, undignified words and remarks is more a norm than the exception, but the recent events in Parliament are slightly different. The ruling party argued that the Opposition MPs, such as Rahul Gandhi, did not support their allegations against the PM with evidence and their statements should, therefore, be expunged. According to Achary, no House rule supports such a contention. House rules only lay down the procedure to be followed so that the Speaker or the government are not taken by surprise.

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According to House rules, MPs need to give advance notice to the Chair and the minister concerned — the minister whose department is to look into such allegations — if they plan to make allegations that could be construed as defamatory or incriminatory. For example, the Speaker and the Minister of Corporate Affairs should be given notice if there is an allegation related to links between an MP and an industrial conglomerate. So, when the MP makes these allegations, the minister can present the facts to the government on the issue. "So both the versions will be available to the House. That is the end of that; no expunction is needed," Achary says.

However, if an MP were to accuse a minister of being a "liar", that is an unparliamentary word that the Chair will order to be expunged. With House rules not specifying defamation, legislatures rely on section 499 of the Indian Penal Code and its second exception. The second exception states that "it is not defamation to express in good faith any opinion" regarding the conduct of a public servant in the discharge of his public functions. According to Achary, an MP does not need to submit an advance notice in such instances, as was the case when Opposition MPs flagged the Hindenburg report in their speeches on the motion of thanks.

Records for posterity

With the live telecast of parliamentary proceedings on sundry television channels and the expunged remarks remaining available on difficult-to-monitor social media, some might consider the rigmarole of ordering the expunction obsolete. "But as some of us MPs have discovered over the last few years, legislative records stay for posterity, comprise reference material for historians and need to be purged of inconvenient truths," an MP said.

In February 2017, CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury, a Rajya Sabha MP at the time, alleged that some words from his speech, made during a discussion on the motion of thanks, were edited out of the 'verbatim record' of the day's proceedings on the Rajya Sabha website. According to Yechury, the missing words were 'deception', 'disruption', 'diversion' and 'diabolic agenda'.

At the time of Yechury's speech, none from the government protested, and neither did the Chair object to these four words he had used to describe the government's conduct. According to Yechury, the missing words were included in the transcript after he lodged an official complaint. But the episode raised questions about the integrity of parliamentary records. "Why were only the words critical of the ruling party removed? Who ordered the removal when the Chair hadn't?" Yechury asked.

In 2016, M B Rajesh, a second-term CPI(M) Lok Sabha member at the time, said portions of one of his speeches criticising the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) had gone missing from the transcript posted on the House website. In Rajesh's case, he was informed that the words were inaudible. He proceeded to provide the Lok Sabha secretariat with a recording of his speech where the 'inaudible' words could be heard clearly.

In March 2016, during a discussion on the Aadhaar Bill in the Rajya Sabha, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh disputed then finance minister Arun Jaitley's claim that two Bills in the 1980s were categorised by the then Congress governments as 'Money Bills'. Jaitley's response had come in the context of the Opposition contesting the government's claim that the Aadhaar Bill was a 'Money Bill' and can, therefore, only be passed by the Lok Sabha. As Jaitley asserted, the Juvenile Justice Bill of 1986 and the African Development Bank Bill of 1983 were classified as 'Money Bills'.

"When I heard the finance minister make that claim, I thought that cannot be true. But Mr Jaitley is never wrong on facts, and I respect him for that, so I decided to check. I spent a few days in the Parliament library going through the records. And then, I went to the Rajya Sabha secretariat to establish the truth. And now I can conclusively say that those two Bills, which the finance minister claimed had been passed as Money Bills, were not Money Bills. I have the confirmation of the Rajya Sabha secretariat," Ramesh said. Jaitley, however, argued that the information was available on the Lok Sabha website.

Eventually, Ramesh agreed that the information was indeed available on the Lok Sabha website and that the finance minister had not intentionally misled the House. However, the episode raised questions about the veracity of information available on the parliamentary websites.

At present, the parties are taking a stand depending on which part of the aisle they stand. The latest episode on Adani Group has brought to fore the issue of expunction in charged atmosphere and hopefully, it could lead to a more robust system that reflects democratic traditions.