JS bodies for more clouts
Demand law for summoning anyone, enforcing appearance, submission of documents
Chiefs of parliamentary standing committees yesterday strongly demanded immediate enactment of a law empowering the House bodies to summon any person or document, and making such person's appearance and submission of such documents mandatory.
Twenty-one committee chiefs in a meeting in Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban unanimously raised the demand while discussing a draft law to strengthen oversight functions of the committees.
A number of committee chiefs told The Daily Star that some of them voiced their grievances over refusal by ministries' high ups to produce documents sought by the committees for investigating alleged irregularities and anomalies in the ministries.
Some of them even criticised the speaker for not approving expenditure for sub-committees to carry out their functions, meeting sources said.
When his attention was drawn to the allegation, Suranjit Sengupta, who organised the meeting, said he and Chief Whip Abdus Shahid, who is also a chief of a House committee, will take up the matter with the speaker.
The speaker verbally requested some chiefs of sub-committees not to visit any area outside the capital as that involves a good amount of expenditure.
About the meeting's outcome, Suranjit, also the chief of the parliamentary standing committee on law justice and parliamentary affairs ministry, said the law minister was present at the meeting and he noted down the proposals.
"The law minister will now take it to the cabinet, and then will place it in parliament for its passage. We hope the parliament will pass the bill in the current session," Suranjit told reporters in his office after the meeting.
"Without this law, the committee system is paralysed. Committees cannot function without the law," he asserted.
At the meeting, almost all committee chiefs argued for taking punitive measures against government officials and individuals who will refuse to appear or produce documents before the committees.
"Ministers even the prime minister of our neighbouring country India appear before the parliamentary committees. Today we have raised the same point and spoke for empowering the parliamentary bodies to ensure accountability of the executive branch to the House," Advocate Fazle Rabbi Mia told The Daily Star.
"Only enactment of a law might not bring positive result unless it has provision for punishment for disobeying the law," Maj (retd) Rafiquel Islam, chief of the parliamentary standing committee on liberation war affairs ministry, said after the meeting.
Although they favoured punitive measures, they however did not seek any stringent punishment, the meeting sources said.
In response to the committee chiefs' sentiment, Suranjit Sengupta, who was presiding over the meeting, told them that a committee might ask the police station concerned to bring the errant individuals including government officials before the committee if those persons fail to respond to two consecutive summonses.
He said a committee might also send the matter to a court for punishing an errant individual under the Code of Civil Procedure for violation of the proposed law.
The law ministry recently drafted the law in line with a constitutional provision.
Article-76 (3) of the constitution says, "Parliament may by law confer on committees appointed under this article powers for -- (a) enforcing the attendance of witnesses and examining them on oath, affirmation or otherwise; (b) compelling the production of documents."
But successive governments failed to move to enact a law to empower the committees since the independence.
The parliamentary bodies have been facing tremendous difficulties in performing their duties as they cannot ensure attendance of witnesses or compel anybody to produce documents required for making decisions.
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