dna special: In 10 years of its rule, Manmohan Singh govt went back on promises 1,024 times

The UPA government has been giving hollow assurances to the parliament. In nearly a decade of power at the Centre since 2004, the UPA government has retracted from its word 1,024 times, according to the ministry of parliamentary affairs.

While replying to questions in the House or during discussions on bills and motions, ministers often give assurances, undertakings or promises to consider a matter, take action or to furnish information to the House at some later date. These have to be implemented in three months.

However, UPA-I dropped 529 assurances while UPA-II dropped 495, according to information accessed by dna from the ministry of parliamentary affairs, which records assurances made in parliament for follow-ups. In 705 cases, the government said it will not be able to implement the undertaking and assurances while in 319 cases it said that the statement given by its ministers should not be treated as assurance in the first place.

Among the many assurances given but later deleted are promises to enact laws to check sexual harassment of women at the workplace to increasing penalty for illegally intercepting mobile calls, and giving powers to the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) to audit certain schemes (See box).

Analysis of nearly 25 reports by a parliamentary standing committee, which checks progress on assurances made, shows that most of the 1,024 undertaking were dropped on the ground that fulfillment was not possible in three months as the assurances are part of ongoing processes.

Protocol demands that if ministries are unable to implement the undertakings in three months, they must seek an extension. If they are unable to implement it despite the extension, then they have to ask the committee to drop the assurance altogether.

However, in many cases the UPA government bypassed the committee by writing to the parliamentary affairs ministry for dropping the assurances. In some cases, the requests were sent without the approval of the minister concerned.

Trust deficit