How Farmers Bills passed Rajya Sabha!

                  How Farmers Bills passed!!

 Greetings, friends! In the last few days, there was a lot of discussions in the Rajya Sabha regarding the farmers  bills Some MPs were suspended. Some are sitting on a protest and some say that that democracy has been reduced to a joke in our country Why is this being said? What exactly happened in the Rajya Sabha? Come, let us find out in today's   article September 20th , 9:39 A.M Union Minister of Agriculture Narendra Tomar tabled Farmers Bill in Rajya Sabha. He said that - The two Bills are historic for the farmers and will change lives of the farmers for the better and he assured that these Bills are not related to Minimum Support Price. You already know that protests are ongoing against these bills in Punjab and Haryana and why they are happening has been explained by me in this  article. The opposition parties are also a part of these protests Congress MP KC Venugopal said that the government's motive behind these bills is to destroy the lives of the farmers and help the corporate sector. This is why Congress Party opposes these bills He demands that the Government should reconsider the bills or at least they should send it to the select committee. At 09:55 A.M, Congress MP Partap Singh suggested that the model proposed by the government should be first implemented in Gujarat and if that is a success, it would be taken up in the rest of the country. At 09:57 A.M, CPI(M)'s KK Ragesh, TMC's Derek O'Brien and DMK's T Siva moved an amendment to send the two Bills to the Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha. At 10:08 A.M, BJP MP Bhupender Yadav lashed out at the Congress and asked what they did for so many years Farmers' income was deteriorating during their reign And asked why these bills were being opposed now At 10:38 A.M, Samajwadi Party MP Ram Gopal Yadav alleged that the ruling party wants no debates and wants to rush through these bills At 10:54 A.M, DMK MP TKS Elangovan- said that the farmers will be made slaves by these Bills. They will become a commodity and lead to more farmer suicides This is basically on overview of how the opposition parties were opposing the bills in the Rajya Sabha 11:23 AM- An Akali Dal party MP demands the Farm Bills to be sent to the select committee of the House. Akali Dal party is aparty from Punjab which is in alliance with the BJP The session of Rajya Sabha was to get over at 1 P.M, but the Deputy Chairperson Harivansh ji said that the session would be extended till the bills are not dealt with The opposition parties again began to protest against this by saying that these bills should be considered the next day, that is on the 21st of September and that the session should not be extended "Honorable Minister, one minute. It is 1 o'clock ... "...through the house that.. the house may be extended till the disposal/completion of this bill" "Does the entire house agree to sit through till the bills are disposed of?" According to tradition, the sense of the House is taken by the chairperson and on that basis, the decision is taken by the chairperson to extend the session or to adjourn it and continue it the next day But this session continued The proceedings continued, the session went on and eventually, the deputy chairperson took a voice vote in the Rajya Sabha to gauge how many MPs are in favour of this bill and how many are against it "I shall now put the motion moved by Narendra Singh Tomar to vote The question is that the Farmers empowerment and protection Agreement on price assurance and farm service Bill, 2020, passed by the Lok Sabha be taken into consideration. Those in favour, please raise their hands and say "Aye" Those against, please raise their hands and say "No" I think the Ayes have it, the Ayes have it, the Ayes have it The motion is adopted" Voice vote is a manner of voting in which the voice is used literally The Speaker asks the Rajya Sabha MPs how many of them are in favour of the bill Those in the favour of the motion say Aye and the ones opposing the bill say No. The Speaker listens to these voices then takes a call on which voice was the loudest and on that basis, a decision is taken that say the Ayes were louder so it could be said that the majority were "aye" and hence the bill should be passed This is a very weird and random method, I know Because it is basically all up to the Speaker- If the Speaker feels that the Ayes were louder than the Nos and according to us, the Nos were louder, then, the Speaker's decision would prevail and the bill would be passed This provision is useful when the majority is clear- say 90% support this bill then the voice vote is used to decide Matters would be disposed off sooner Proceedings would get over sooner and matters would get taken care of easily But in cases where the opinion is split in a ratio of say 60-40% Then it becomes difficult to say merely by listening whether the Ayes were louder or the Nos were louder This is the reason why there is another provision- The rule book of the Rajya Sabha states that if any member of the Rajya Sabha feels that the decision of the voice vote is incorrect then the member can demand for a "division " in place of a voice vote Now, what is division? Basically, there are four methods of voting in Rajya Sabha. First is voice vote Second is counting in which the members of Rajya Sabha would be asked to raise their hands in support or they would rise from their seats and then a counting would be conducted The third and the fourth method is division A permanent record is maintained in the third and the fourth method of how many MPs voted in favour of the bill and how many voted against it No permanent record is maintained in the first two methods because in a voice vote it becomes extremely difficult to tell exactly how many MPs were in favor and how many were against There can be mistakes in counting as well There are two methods of division- One entails an automatic vote recorder in which buttons are pressed and a screen displays the number of those who voted yes and those who voted no and the second method entails recording of votes by going into lobbies The Rulebook of the Rajya Sabha clearly states that if the voice vote is challenged by any member, the chairman must ask for a division If any member of the Rajya Sabha is not happy with the voice vote and that they want a division Then the chairman must pay heed and order a division The same demand was raised by the opposition MPs when the voice vote on the farmers bills was in progress and they demanded a voting by division Harivansh ji overruled this by saying that the division was only possible when all the MPs would go back to their seats "You are not returning to your seats. You're in the well and hence cannot ask for a division Please return to your seats" If you go to the Rajya Sabha Tv YouTube Channel, you'd come across a  article- Rajya Sabha session 252 Play the  article from 2:17 Did you notice that the audio was muted for three seconds ? And during this, the demand for a division was raised because the next statement of the Speaker is that a division should be demanded only upon returning to their seats This is also very interesting that when the opposition made a demand for a division the audio was muted for those few seconds The rejection of this demand caused a further uproar in the Parliament TMC MP Derek O' Brien flashed the parliamentary conduct rule book and said that if there was no division of votes then it would amount to a violation of conduct There is an uproar in the Parliament regarding this and some opposition MPs even broke the mic The media shows that Derek O' Brien tore the rule book in front of the chairman and it is presented as if the opposition does not respect democracy But Derek O' Brien says that he did not tear the rule book He had merely gone to the front to show it And as for the mics that were being broken, this is what he had to say "To the people who are saying today that opposition did not respect democracy Why was this done in the first place at 1:10? or 1:05? After that, the opposition was in the well of the house There were protests, there was a lot of heat Yes 2 or 3 opposition MPs broke the microphone What do you want them to do? Sit on the seat and have lollipop? Extreme situations call for extreme forms of protest Why are we talking about breaking 2 -3 microphones when the BJP is actually breaking the very backbone of our Parliamentary democracy" During this time, Rajya Sabha Tv stops its broadcasting and all the microphones are muted. Basically, the Rajya Sabha TV is censored So that the public is not able to see all this and is not able to see all the slogans made by the opposition MP Derek O' Brien said that he realised that Rajya Sabha was being censored so he instructed the rest of the MPs to take out their phones and record what was happening "Thankfully, I have done enough television before . So, I know what an online switch  article is I was looking at those four cams And all those four cameras were showing Lok Sabha So, that is the time the MPs also had to think You can make your own rules for democracy- Yes, there are rules, you shouldn't be shooting you shouldn't be shooting in the House, you shouldn't be shooting in the central hall We won't let you get away with it There were 2-3 opposition MPs who took out their phone and I told them... I told them to shoot We shot it. We've got record of it" One  article shows AAP leader Sanjay Singh, who is seen as standing on the table and protesting So a pandemonium reigns overall. If you only see this  article, and the godi media is going to show you only this  article, then it would cause you to surmise that the opposition leaders are all creating a racket uselessly and that they are not concerned with doing any work But this is the backstory of why the opposition leaders were protesting in the first place And TMC MP Derek O' Brien has stated again and again that this is murder of democracy because the voting was done in a fair manner He claims that the BJP did not have enough numbers in the Rajya Sabha to get this bill passed and so they deliberately did not hold a proper voting and passed this bill on a mere voice vote very hurriedly which is extremely undemocratic The basic purpose of the Rajya Sabha/Parliament to decide on the basis of consensus on what the majority MPs support- whether the bill should be passed or not and a decision should be arrived on that basis- which was not done in this case In my opinion, irrespective of whether you support or oppose the farmers bills, one thing is for sure- what happened in the Rajya Sabha was wrong and undemocratic Say, tomorrow a party comes to power in the central government and they pass the bills on the basis of voice votes without actual voting then what meaning would the numbers or the majority or even voting hold? If they want to do as they wish, they would resort to such means What is surprising is the justifications provided by the government after this happened The agriculture minister said that they did not refer these Bills to select committee because these are small Bills BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said that with technology, the processes need to be sped up so this was merely a way to speed up The deputy chairman said that division of votes cannot happen because the members were not in their seats But the rules clearly state that Under no circumstances can the chair ignore the demand for a vote (division) and go ahead and declare the motion passed through a voice vote. In fact, when things like this happened in the past- When there was a lot of chaos in the house, then the house was adjourned and when the members returned to their seats, then the voting (division) was held This could have been done very easily The house could have been adjourned for some time and the voting could take place after that On the other hand, Rajya Sabha chairman suspended eight opposition MPs for misbehavior The suspended MPs were Derek O’Brien and Dola Sen from Trinamool Congress, Sanjay Singh from AAP, Rajeev Satav, Nasir Hussain and Ripun Bora from the Congress, and KK Ragesh and E Kareem from the CPI (M). The opposition MPs sat outside at Gandhi statue in Parliament House in protest against not only what happened in the Rajya Ssbha that day but also against the farmers bills Due to this, today, on 22nd September as I make this  article, 7 bills were passed in the Rajya Sabha with almost no opposition present Most of the parties were outside protesting with these MPs This was the scene in the Rajya Sabha as you can see in the photo First, the opposition was denied voting, when they protested, they were suspended and now there is no opposition now the bills can be passed in the Rajya Sabha very easily An update on 24th September- In the last 2 days, 15 bills were passed in the Rajya Sabha because the opposition had boycotted it union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the centre might consider revoking the suspension of the MPs if these MPs apologize technically, the speaker of the house should be independent from the central government But if Ravi Shankar Prasad is saying this, he is basically admitting that the central government is controlling the Speaker and that he is not independent This is the democracy of today On the other hand, the media is desperately trying to show that that it is not the farmers that are protesting, it is the opposition parties and it is the middlemen who are protesting because they will incur heavy losses due to the passage of these bills As you are aware, this is not the complete truth In this  article, I had clearly said that the farmers are protesting because they are worried they will not be given the MSP The government had increased MSP recently and it was being hailed as a historic decision when it was one of the lowest increases in MSP since 2010 Basically, the farmers are demanding a simple thing- enforce the MSP even outside the mandis If private players are going to be involved then they want a guarantee of a minimum support price which the government has not yet done I hope you would have found this  article to be informative. 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