Rakesh Sinha announced his decision to move the Bill soon after the RSS said that the Centre should bring a law for the construction of a grand Ram temple at Ayodhya.
RSS ideologue Rakesh Sinha, who was recently nominated to Rajya Sabha by the President, is planning to move a Private Member’s Bill (PMB) for construction of Ram temple at Ayodhya. However, given the history of such “private” Bills, the fate of this one too is uncertain.
The Rajya Sabha member announced his decision soon after the RSS said that the Centre should bring a law for construction of a grand Ram temple at Ayodhya. However, the only Union minister to have backed Sinha so far is Uma Bharti.
While only 14 such Bills have been passed in Parliament so far since Independence, no such Bill has been passed in the last 48 years.
Six of the 14 Bills were passed in 1956 alone, while the Supreme Court (Enlargement of Criminal Appellate Jurisdiction) Bill, 1968, was the last PMB which was passed in 1970.
The Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2014, introduced by Tiruchi Siva and passed by Rajya Sabha in 2015, was the first PMB to get the approval of the Upper House in last 45 year. The Bill is still pending in Lok Sabha.
During the last three (13th, 14th and 15th) Lok Sabhas, as many as 1,043 PMBs were introduced but only 42 were discussed while the rest just lapsed, according to a study by PRS Legislative Research. No other Bill was passed.
PMBs are those Bills presented by Members of Parliament other than Ministers. The Bills introduced by Ministers are called Government Bills.
PMBs are usually drafted by MPs themselves and are checked for legal consistency by the Parliament Secretariat.
Sinha’s decision to introduce the Bill comes in the wake of a Supreme Court Bench, headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, deciding to defer the hearings in Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case to January next year. The Bench said an “appropriate” new Bench will decide the date of next hearings in the case.
The Bench had given the order while hearing the petitions challenging the 2010 Allahabad High Court verdict, which had divided the disputed land in Ayodhya into three parts—one each to the Sunni Wakf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara Dal and Ram Lall.