Ahead of the upcoming Winter Session of Parliament, access to the questions portal has been restricted to Lok Sabha MPs only, excluding their personal staff, according to sources. No official orders have been issued. The process of filing questions for Rajya Sabha MPs continues as before, with personal assistants also having access.
The Parliament website for both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha was upgraded on August 1. Instead of two different portals — one for ‘e-notices’, to submit questions, notices and private bills, and a separate members’ portal to submit travel bills and other necessities — a single, common portal was launched. Sources said that, till recently, Lok Sabha MPs and their designated personal assistants each had log-in credentials for this portal. Ahead of the winter session, this has been restricted to just the MPs’ registered numbers.
“There are no official orders to this effect. When we called the question branch of Lok Sabha, the officials claimed that this was a fall-out of the Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra’s alleged ‘cash-for-query’ episode,” the personal staff of an Opposition Lok Sabha MP said.
