Parliament and I

Parliament and I

As I watched the Lok Sabha TV today bringing the Monsoon Session of the Parliament at a close sine die, I had a very peculiar inexplicable lump in my throat.

 Every Ministry has a Parliament Section which is supervised by an officer, among other duties. This responsibility relating to Parliamentary work is considered an ‘absolutely-no-perks-all-nuisance’ responsibility among officers, and generally there is a game of passing the parcel to the most vulnerable/docile/ un-networked officer with that responsibility. So not too unexpectedly, in one of the Ministries, immediately on joining on transfer, I was assigned Parliamentary work.

When Parliament is in Session, the Parliament Section normally works the whole night before the Question day,  that is to say, twice in a week. More often than not, the Minister clears the last Question file only around 8 pm on the day preceding the Question day. After the Minister approves, work of the graveyard shift begins. The Hindi Section translates the responses and provides the Hindi Version, the Parliament Section gets the English Version typed in prescribed format, make umpteen bilingual copies and sets. The task of Parliament Section gets over after they deliver the sets to the respective House Secretariat, which might well happen in the morning of the Question Day, depending on the volume of Questions.

No, as the supervisory officer, I was not required to stay the night, but had the total responsibility. I usually  left office after the last file was approved by the Minister, and reached office next day an hour before office hours, just in case…. I was answerable for all errors and omissions and commissions. It was an uneasy cross to bear, as human errors do happen under pressure…like I remember the time it was detected at 8 am in the morning of the Question Day that the Hindi version of an answer had a mistake, and nobody in the Hindi Section was available so early in the morning.  I had to think on my feet. I located and sent Hindi knowing staff from another section under my charge to Parliament to make corrections in the copies in hand, to be readied before the Question Hour at 11. 

In my limited way, as the supervisory officer of Parliament Section, I did try to make the task of my team a little easier. Earlier, every Division in the Ministry got the basic draft response to Parliament Questions prepared as they found convenient and submitted files to Minister for approval. It was considered the sole responsibility of the Parliament Section to get the approved replies typed in the standard prescribed format. One of the first things I did was to streamline procedures. I took approval of the Secretary of the Ministry that henceforth every Divisional Head should get the draft response typed only in the Parliament prescribed format, and send hard and soft copy of the draft response to Parliament Section and Hindi Section in advance. In 95% cases, the Minister approved the draft reply as it is, and so this way, re-typing the English version in the Parliament Section could be avoided, minimizing chance of typo and saving time, and Hindi Section also got lead time to translate the draft reply.

I did find my ‘perks’ in the dry ‘‘absolutely-no-perks-all-nuisance’’ responsibility too.

One, the Minister became directly aware of who I was   and my work, which, in hindsight, helped me in a convoluted way in my annual performance assessment. I happened to work under an opinionated Secretary for some time who invariably graded all non-IAS officers tad below the IAS officers of the same level. It was such a humbling feeling to get a photocopy of what the Minister had written about me later from Administration for my record. As the Reviewing authority, The Minister had disagreed with the Secretary’s assessment about me and significantly upped my grading.

The second ‘perk’ was in deciding which Division in the Ministry should handle a particular Parliament Question. It is a fact that nobody really likes to handle a Parliament Question directly, and at the flimsiest of opportunity, dodges it horizontally to a colleague. As the supervisory officer of Parliament Section, I was able to pre-empt many such moves of my colleagues by taking orders of the Secretary beforehand. They grumbled, but had to comply with orders, and ahem , I was able to excuse myself successfully too sometimes…hahahaha. After all , charity should begin at home.

Though I was supervisory officer for Parliament Section only in one Ministry, in my more than three decade long working life serving the Central Government, ever since my first posting, I have been exposed to Parliamentary work, be it Parliament Questions, Parliamentary Committees, or legislative business relating to the Ministries that I was posted in.  I have lost count of the number of times I had been to Parliament, to the Official Gallery, to brief Ministers in their allotted rooms in Parliament, attending meetings of Parliamentary Committees as official witness......

 So many memories… …some unnerving in hindsight… I was in Parliament to brief my Minister the day Parliament attack had happened… just half an hour earlier I had come out , …, some very satisfying… the elation one feels sitting in the Official Gallery to see the House pass a Bill one has spent midnight oil on…..   

This was my last Parliament Session as a Central Government Officer. I will hang up my boots before the Winter Session commences.

I silently lipped the National Song Vande Mataram along with the Parliamentarians as I stood and watched the Lok Sabha TV in the privacy of my office room. Yes, I had a lump in my throat.