Provide adequate opportunity to people for feedback on net zero emissions Bill

By Shankar Sharma*
Social media reports indicate that Bill No. LXXXIII of 2022: The Net Zero Emissions Bill, 2022 was introduced in the Rajya Sabha on 9th December, 2022.
This Bill can be seen as having huge importance from the perspective of the future of not only our own people, but also of the human kind. As such, it is highly desirable that the people of the country also get an opportunity to positively contribute to the discussion on the draft Bill through feedback to Rajya Sabha.
It has been a well established fact that the phenomenon of Climate Change, which is at the focal point of this Bill, cannot be effectively addressed without the effective participation of the people at large; and in the present case by the people of this country. It has been noticed that the successive governments in the recent past have not made any efforts to seek the views of the people on all such important Bills, for whom such Bills are meant. And the result can be stated as in-effective in the sense that plans such as the National Action Plan on Climate Change, which was adopted by the Union government many years ago, has not led to meaningful action in practice. The present Bill is even more important from that perspective.
Hence, may I request that adequate opportunities be given for the people to provide their feedback on this Bill, and that the same may please be arranged to be deliberated on in the Rajya Sabha? Such an opportunity can be in the form of the relevant Standing Committee of the Parliament seeking public comments on the Bill, before it is taken up for discussions in Rajya Sabha.
The version of the Bill as being reported in the social media is as attached to this representation. If the official version of the Bill is different to this version, the same may kindly be released to the public.
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*Power & Climate Policy Analyst

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