Parliamentary Privileges vis-a-vis Fundamental Rights : Need for a Comprehensive Law on Privileges of the Parliament
By
Bellary Uma Devi
“It may not be out of place to suggest to the appropriate authority to make a law regulating the powers, privileges and immunities of the Legislature instead of keeping the branch of law in a nebulous state, with the result that citizen will have to make a research into the unwritten law of the privileges of the House of Commons at the risk of being called before the Bar of the Legislature". (AIR 1959 SC 395 at p. 419).
Unfortunately, this significant suggestion made by K. Subba Rao, J. as far back as in 1958, in his dissenting judgment in M. S. M. Sharma v. Sri Krishna Sinha, AIR 1959 SC 395, has gone unheeded and neither the Parliament nor any State Legislature has yet passed a comprehensive law in this field. Art. 105 of the Constitution which lays down the powers, privileges and immunities of Parliament and its members, reads—
105. Powers, privileges, etc. of the House of Parliament and of the members and committees thereof.— (1) Subject to ....