On 20th May 1949, Professor KT Shah, Bihar General moved the Amendment in the Constituent Assembly and spoke as follows;
“Either House of Parliament shall be to receive Petition or representation from the People of India or from People of any unit forming part of the Union of India.”
Sir I consider this a very important right of the people and a privilege of Parliament if I may say so that people whom the Parliament is supposed to represent should have the right approach directly the sovereign legislature and place before it grievances or cases which require the Parliament’s attention as a body concerned in any legislation pending before it—-
“I suggest that People should have the right of direct access for placing before Parliament on any given subject their views and getting the Parliament’s reaction thereon it is in this country an old privilege of the poorest that fancying themselves aggrieved or any individual fancy himself aggrieved had a direct right of access to the sovereign, even the days of the old absolute empress. In modern times then we profess so much regard to the people as sovereign when we are declaring from the housetops that the ultimate sovereign is the people and that we are only the servants or representatives of the people I think it is not asking too much at all to suggest that this which forms admittedly the rights of the people and privilege of the Parliament in Britain on which our Constitution is modelled should also be included in our Constitution, namely that the People should have the right of direct access to Parliament and present Petition for that purpose.”
Comment: Even now after 72 years it is not too late to include the right to access Parliament as a Constitutional privilege of any Citizens – voter or non-voter to be included in Part III of the Constitution which speaks about so elaborately about the freedom of speech and expression.