Role of DRSCs in Legislation

• The Competition (Amendment) Bill & Electricity (Amendment) Bill were recently referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committees for detailed analysis in the monsoon session.
• The Govt. remains wary of referring the bills to DRSCs as the process was time consuming and counterproductive.

Importance of such committees

• No obligation on the Government to accept to refer all the legislation to the DRSCs
• DRSC has been largely beneficial in the process of lawmaking.
• Bills passed without the scrutiny of such committees are criticised as not being examined fully.
• Eg: The controversy over Farm Bills.
• Committee meetings are held in a friendly setting as compared to meetings in the Parliament.
• Discussion helps add value to the content of the legislation
• Bills scrutinised by the committees foster ownership of such bills by the members of the committee.

Recommendations

• The Speaker of LS and Chairman of RS while referring bills to a DRSC are influenced by political and administrative factors. For this:
• the process of reference of Bills to the committees can be made a mandatory or an automatic process.
• exemptions can be provided with the specific approval of the Speaker/Chairman after detailed reasoning.
• Ensuring that all the discussions in DRSCs must be free by making sure that no whip of the party would apply to them.
• DRSCs can be given a fixed timeline to present reports and such timelines can be fixed by the Speaker/ Chairman.
• If DRSCs fail to submit its report within the timeline, the Bill can be put up before the House concerned directly to avoid delays.
• To improve quality assessments, a provision must be introduced to invite experts from the respective fields which help make key decisions in line with the latest trends in that field.
• DRSCs should also make suggestions for the Ministry about the prospects of new initiatives and potential of people-centric measures.

Prelims Takeaway

• DRSCs
• Office of whip