Parliamentary forum

Subject: Polity

Context:

Discussions in parliamentary forums would have helped the government get feedback on the ground situation across the country and fine-tune its response.

Concept:

• The first Parliamentary Forum on Water Conservation & Management was constituted on 12 August, 2005. Thereafter, four more Parliamentary Forums on Children, Youth, Population & Public Health and Global Warming & Climate Change were also constituted in the Fourteenth Lok Sabha.
• During the term of the Fifteenth Lok Sabha, the Speaker, Lok Sabha constituted three more Parliamentary Forums on Disaster Management on 8 December, 2011, Artisans & Craftspeople on 26 April, 2013 and Millennium Development Goals on 11 December, 2013 there by increasing the number of Parliamentary Forums to eight.
• The Parliamentary Forums do not interfere with and encroach upon the jurisdiction of the Departmentally Related Standing Committees and the respective Ministry/Department.
• The objectives behind constitution of these Parliamentary Forums are to:
  • provide a platform to the Members of Parliament to have interaction with the concerned Ministers, Experts and key officials from the nodal Ministries with a view to have a focussed and meaningful discussion on critical issues with a result-oriented approach for speeding up the implementation process;
  • sensitize the Members of Parliament about the key areas of concern as well as the ground-level situation and equip them with latest information, knowledge, technical know how and valuable inputs from experts both from the country and abroad for enabling them to raise these issues effectively on the Floor of the House and in the meetings of Parliamentary Committees; and
  • prepare a data-base through collection of data/information on critical issues from the concerned Ministries, Internet, NGOs, newspapers, United Nations, etc. and circulation thereof to the Members of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha so that they can meaningfully participate in the deliberations at the meetings of the Forums and seek clarifications from the experts or officials from the Ministry present in the Meetings.
• Composition: The guidelines of the respective Forum provide that the Speaker, Lok Sabha is of all the Parliamentary Forums except the Parliamentary Forum on Population and Public Health where the Chairman, Rajya Sabha is the ex-officio President and the Speaker, Lok Sabha is the ex-officio Co-President of the Forum.
• Apart from President, Deputy Chairman, Rajya Sabha, Deputy Speaker, Lok Sabha, the concerned Ministers and Chairpersons of the respective Departmentally Related Standing Committees are ex-officio Vice-Presidents of the Forum.
• Each Forum consists of not more than 31 members (excluding the President, Co-President and Vice-Presidents) out of whom not more than 21 are from Lok Sabha and not more than 10 are from Rajya Sabha.
• The term of office of the Members of the Forum is co-terminus with their membership in the respective Houses.