Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu has directed the Secretariat of the Upper House to promote awareness among the public about the procedures and functioning of its Ethics Committee.
The Committee oversees the conduct of the members and examines complaints of unethical conduct to enable its effective functioning.
Mr Naidu’s directive came after a review of the functioning of the committee last week. It came to his notice that 22 complaints against 19 members of the Rajya Sabha during the last four years, had to be returned by the Committee without examination since the complaints were not made as per the prescribed procedure.
Under the relevant rules, any person can make a complaint of unethical conduct against a member of the house in writing either to the Ethics Committee or an officer authorized by the Committee.
AIR correspondent quoting sources reports, the complaints against 19 members of the Rajya Sabha belonging to eight major parties from both the ruling and opposition benches besides two independent members were not taken up for preliminary examination the Ethics Committee as they were not directly addressed to the authorities under the rules.
Ethics Committee of the Rajya Sabha, the first of its kind for legislatures in the country, was set up in 1997 to oversee the moral and ethical conduct of the members’ internal self-regulatory mechanism.
The Committee has submitted ten reports so far.
Discussion about this post