Speaker sets up panels to improve Assemblies' workrate

After a marathon meeting with Assembly Speakers of 30 states, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Wednesday announced setting up four committees to ensure more productivity in state legislatures and achieve a seamless unified digital presence of both Houses of Parliament and state Assemblies.

Besides, the four committees that will be set up, the Chairs of legislatures also agreed to frame a Common Code of Conduct for all legislative bodies to check interruptions. Earlier, Birla, as well as Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu, had already urged political parties to frame a Code of Conduct for their members to prevent unnecessary disruptions in both the Houses.

A formal meeting of Chairs of all state legislatures will be held in Goa in second week of November (12-13 likely) in which the committees will submit reports and issues related to the Common Code of Conduct will be thrashed out.

Birla informed this at a press conference after presiding over the meetings of the Executive Committee of Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) India Region and Presiding Officers of Legislative Bodies of the country.

Birla said that there was a consensus among the Presiding Officers to increase the number of sittings of the State Legislatures and also to increase the productivity of legislative work.

Ideally, any state Assembly should have 90 working days of session in an year but there have been examples in states where the total number of session working days in a year was even less than a week.

Birla said that a common Code of Conduct will be framed for Legislative Bodies to check interruptions.

For this, a Committee of Presiding Officers would be formed, which after due consultations with the Speakers of Legislative Assemblies and the Chairmen of Legislative Councils, would present its report at the next Presiding Officers Conference to be held at Dehradun in November.

It was unanimously agreed upon by all the Presiding Officers that a Committee would look into the issue how National eVidhan Application (NeVA) would be uniformly applicable in the state Legislatures. Besides, an Action Taken Report would be prepared for improving the efficiency of Legislative Bodies.