Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien on Wednesday attacked the government over the hurried passage of bills in the ongoing Parliament session. “Parliament is supposed to scrutinise Bills,” O’Brien said in a tweet. “Are we delivering pizzas or passing legislation?”

O’Brien’s tweet accompanied a chart showing the “bulldozing” in the ongoing Session. The chart showed the number of bills that were sent to parliamentary panels for scrutiny since 2004. As many as 60% of the bills were sent for scrutiny during the 14th Lok Sabha and 71% in the 15th Lok Sabha, but this dropped to 26% between 2014 and 2019, the chart showed. The 17th Lok Sabha has passed 18 bills, but only one of them was sent for scrutiny, according to the chart.

The Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014.

O’Brien’s criticism came after the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2019, better known as the triple talaq bill, was passed in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday. The BJP had comfortably managed the numbers in favour of the legislation, which criminalises instant divorce by Muslim men.

On Tuesday, the O’Brien had said the way the bills were being passed amounted to a “mockery of Parliament” and it was the government’s way of “smothering” the Opposition, PTI reported.

Last week, the Trinamool Congress MP had also criticised the passage of the Right to Information (Amendment) Bill. He had said that the government was passing bills in Parliament without any scrutiny and said a united Opposition cannot be “steamrolled”. He accused the government of using its “brute majority” in Lok Sabha to bulldoze the “faulty RTI Bill”.

On July 26, seventeen MPs from Opposition parties had written to Rajya Sabha Chairperson M Venkaiah Naidu raising concerns over the “hurried passing” of bills in Parliament. They alleged that the bills were being passed without any scrutiny and asked Naidu to interfere.