By Ashraf Padanna/Thiruvananthapuram

Vice-President Hamid Ansari yesterday criticised lawmakers who constantly disrupt the national parliament and state legislatures.
“My concern today is with the institution of legislatures,” Ansari said while addressing the Kerala Legislative Assembly which is commemorating its 125th anniversary after it started as a legislative council in the former princely state of Travancore.
“(The legislative houses) tend to become sites for adversarial combat in which the hallmark of an effective legislator is often seen to be an ability to shout and disrupt proceedings, preferably from the well of the House,” he said.
Ansari, during the just-concluded monsoon session, admonished members of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament which he chairs, as a “confederation of anarchists.”
The monsoon session of the Kerala assembly ended prematurely following a weeklong protest by opposition legislators over a cheating case in which members of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy’s staff were allegedly involved.
He said where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for unconstitutional methods like civil disobedience which are “nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us,” he said the case for legislative bodies must there.
He said an effort needs to be made to appreciate that excitability, decibel intensity and verbosity do not add to the strength of the argument or the dignity of the legislature.
“A legislator’s oath of office, to faithfully discharge (his or her) duty, could perhaps be amplified to include observance of rules of procedure of the legislative body concerned,” Ansari said.
He also criticised the systemic failures in India’s parliamentary democracy pointing out that politicians who make it to parliament are endorsed most often by less than 25% of the electorate and candidates cultivating vote banks cause divisions and tensions in society.