26 Jun, 2020

Last edited: 11 Jan, 2021, 6:14 PM

India's first ever Janta Parliament

Participate and discuss urgent Covid related policy issues. Become a Citizen Expert and get an exclusive invite to be an MjP in the live sittings in August.

The special session of Janta Parliament has started with citizen engagement across 10 themes on the NextElection platform, followed by 10 live sittings in August to simulate real Parliament proceedings.

Atmanirbhar Bharat starts with us

The 10 themes have been carefully selected to reflect wide ranging topics like education, heathcare, governance, industry, etc. Decisions made by the central and state governments in each of these areas affect our lives, livehood, well being and the future of our country.

Contribute your suggestions, policy inputs, grievances and structured thoughts in each of the themes. Participate in polls, surveys and quizzes.

Make your inputs directly impact future governance and policy decisions. Jump to the 10 channels on NextElection and start posting.

The best voices will be invited to participate in the live sittings as "Citizen Experts".

Live sittings

The live sittings will be simulated virtual Parliament sittings, conducted by the people, for the people. Efforts will be made to mirror the actual Parliament as closely as possible, with a presiding officer running the House as per rules and procedures.

The sittings will be conducted completely online, over 5 days in August, covering 10 themes with invited participants to act as elected representatives.

Dates#

Janta Parliament is tentatively scheduled to be held between 4th to 8th August 2020 (when the Monsoon Session of Parliament should ideally start).

The Parliament session will be spread over five days, with two sittings each day, one sitting for each House of Parliament, and a pilot sitting on 28th July.

Invites for the live sittings#

Win an invite to the live sittings by qualifying as a Citizen Expert.

Start by posting in the theme channels. Your posts and activity automatically enters you in the running contest for Citizen Expert.

The virtual Parliament sittings in August will have participation from politicians, industry experts, civil society, academia and citizen experts. Members of Parliament from opposition parties will be invited to participate in the discussion as Shadow Ministers and participate in preparation of policy proposals.

Members of the Press are invited to be present as part of the Press Gallery

Background#

The Budget Session of Parliament was curtailed and ended on 23rd March 2020 and since then Parliament has not been in session and even Parliamentary Committees met only few times in June. In other countries, arrangements have been made for MPs to convene online and hold sessions as well as Committee meetings, however this has not been done in India so far. The Monsoon Session of Parliament ordinarily would have started by mid-July, but it may be advanced to August. With Parliament not being in session, the absence of the most important platform to seek representative accountability during the Covid pandemic has created a crisis of its own!

Objectives#

1. To demonstrate that it would not have been difficult to convene a Parliament session, online, had the government intended to
2. To set agenda for what must be discussed whenever the Parliament session is convened
3. To have issue based discussions instead of political rhetoric

Output#

• Policy proposals will be prepared along with suggestions and interventions presented by participants on the floor of the House
• A citizen engagement exercise will be undertaken post the discussions - the policy proposals will be taken to people, for the purpose of eliciting even wider suggestions and opinions
• Final proposals will be submitted to Members of Parliament so that they may table the same in Parliament, refer to those in discussions during Monsoon Session, submit those as memorandum to the Government