Allowing state legislatures to establish one or more state capitals within a state’s territory, strengthening the 10th Schedule to the Constitution, discouraging the horse trade, criminalizing threats against women on social media – these are among the many private member’s bills which were introduced in Rajya Sabha on Friday.
V Vijayasai Reddy of the YSRCP introduced the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2022 (insertion of new Section 3A) to give state legislatures explicit legislative authority to establish one or more capital cities within their jurisdictions. His party government intended to develop three capital cities for Andhra Pradesh.
The Andhra Pradesh Assembly had passed bills in 2020 to establish Visakhapatnam as the executive capital of the state and Amaravati and Kurnool as the legislative and judicial capitals. The government last year repealed both laws, with Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy promising to introduce a “better” and “comprehensive” bill after filling in the loopholes of the previous version.
AAP’s Raghav Chadha introduced a bill to amend Sections 102 and 191 of the Constitution to make it stricter by adding a provision that carries a further six-year disqualification from the date a member is disqualified under the 10th schedule (anti-defection law).
“Through the introduction of such a provision, lawmakers who engage in horse trading and dishonor the mandate of the electorate will be barred from contesting a by-election and being re-elected,” the statement of objects said. and reasons for the bill.
The Bill also seeks to introduce a provision stating that if a Member or MP does not appear within seven days before the Speaker or Speaker of the House when his presence is requested by the Party Whip, that amounts to voluntarily renouncing their status as a member of the political party from whose list they were elected.
“Due to the ambiguous interpretation of voluntary waiver of membership, there has been a sharp increase in instances of resort policy at the expense of the taxpayer. This provision establishes clear criteria that will lead to disqualification if a person does not does not respond to the advice of the President/Speaker,” the bill reads.
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TMC’s Derek O’Brien introduced a bill to amend the Information Technology (Amendment) Bill 2022 to criminalize threats against women on social media platforms.
The bill provides for a prison sentence ranging from three to 10 years and fines between Rs 50,000 and Rs 10 lakh for those found guilty of “threatening physical violence against a woman, her family or her property, threat of sexual assault, threat to reveal private information including but not limited to his location, place of work and any other relevant details that could be used to harm him physically or mentally, threat to spread false information about him, the threat of questioning a person’s citizenship or the imputation of disloyalty to India, the threat of false prosecution and abuse based on religion, caste or sexuality”.
CPI MP Binoy Viswam introduced a bill titled ‘Bhagat Singh’s National Urban Employment Guarantee Bill’ for the formulation of an urban employment guarantee scheme aimed at to provide at least 200 days of guaranteed employment each year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled, semi-skilled or skilled work.
