(Image source from: How birth of Telangana killed Indian democracy?})
The last day of the 15th Lok Sabha session will go down in the chronicles of history as the day when the custodians of democracy threw freedom in the wind and bifurcated Andhra Pradesh, sans the consent of its 42 LS Mps. Deemed as a crushing defeat of democracy in the sacred floors of the Parliament, lawmakers bifurcated the state without allowing the leaders of the region to put their dissent on record.
What more, to keep the farcical proceedings away from public glare or scrutiny, Lok Sabha live telecast was cut off so that the world couldn't see how democracy was stiffled to death in broad day light, all under the name of 'technical glitch'. Nevertheless, the decision to shut off the telecast — jointly taken by Speaker of the House Meira Kumar and leader of the opposition Sushma Swaraj — was nothing but an exercise in bad politics.
The Lok Sabha secretariat, which directly controls the telecast on the channel, later explicated: "The proceedings of the Lok Sabha could not be telecast live by Lok Sabha Television due to technical problems when the House assembled at 15-00 hrs on 18 February, 2014. The CEO LSTV is probing into it. It is unfortunate that people were unable to watch the live telecast of the passage of this bill which was done democratically.”
The LS secretariat wants the country to believe that muzzling the voices of the MPs, shutting off live telecast, deploying military of marshals all around, closing doors, refusing to hear voices of dissent, not allowing any division or vote on amendments and dismissing any debate on merits of the bill is 'democratic'.
The lawmakers wants us to believe that the Telangana bill that was bulldozed by a government whose credibility quotient was nethermost in its last days in office, was 'democratic'.
2014 India does not need any official release to make an opinion. A repeat telecast of the ongoings at the house would have been hugely embarrassing for Congress because of the way it forced its decision.
The Congress’s motive behind this last minute push after deliberately witholding it for the past one decade was understandable. However, it was majoritarianism of the worst kind when the opposition party BJP considered itself obliged to support Congress' decision, so as to amass more votes and some new seats in the newly formed Telangana state, irrespective of the manner in which the bill was pushed through was in complete disregard of parliamentary practices.
AW: Suchorita Choudhury
