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| Students get feel of Assembly, to enact 'Mock Parliament' in schools | | | ARTEEV SHARMA
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Mar 27: The Lower House of State Legislature today witnessed the presence of unusual guests in the form of students from different schools of Jammu city.
It was a rare experience for the students to have the feel of state government's working in the Legislative Assembly. A total of 20 students (10 girls and 10 boys) from Government Higher Secondary School (Girls) Mubarak Mandi and SMRL Higher Secondary (Boys) School accompanied by eight teachers attended the proceedings of the House and got the chance to get acquainted themselves with democratic apparatus.
"Though the proceedings in the Assembly looked quite boring and uninteresting, yet I was amazed over the total control exercised by the Speaker over the MLAs and Ministers on the volley of questions fired and answers produced in the session," said Anshu Sharma, 15, a Class 10th student of Mubarak Mandi School.
She showed keen interest to enact Speaker of the House in the 'Youth Parliament' to be conducted in different schools of the State soon.
The idea of 'Youth Parliament' was conceived by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs with a view to strengthen the roots of democracy, inculcate healthy habits of discipline, tolerance of the views of others and to enable the student community to know something about the working of Parliament and state assemblies.
The proposal of 'Youth Parliament' was mooted during the Fourth All India Whips Conference held in Mumbai 1962, wherein a guideline was issued regarding allowing students to witness the Parliament's proceedings for "mock enactments."
"We wanted to acquaint the students with the assembly proceedings as they are the future of our nation. We invited them for getting firsthand experience of the assembly so that they get trained themselves with assembly business," Mohammad Akbar Lone, the Speaker Legislative Assembly told Early Times.
Although Poonam Mehra and Mehak Salaria, both the students from Mubarak Mandi, did not find the proceedings thrilling and exciting but they were quite excited to see the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and other ministers from a closer distance.
"This is a historic event for me as I am very much impressed with the assembly working. This has really shifted my priority of undertaking career option from engineering to politics. I think by presenting oneself in integral way in a democratic system, an elected politician can help his people in securing their democratic rights," said enthusiastically looking Nehal Sharma, a student of SMRL Higher Secondary School.
"The project was not implemented in Jammu and Kashmir till date due to non-existence of Department of Parliamentary Affairs here. The Directorate of School Education has been entrusted with a responsibility to guide students of various schools for participation in the assembly proceedings through 'mock Parliament' concept, which has now been rechristened as 'Youth Parliament," Manmeet Bali, Cultural Officer from the Directorate of School Education said.
"This is almost on the pattern of the 'mock courts' held generally in the law departments of various universities where the students themselves enact the court proceedings over certain cases to get themselves thoroughly acquainted with the minutest of the observations of the court," she said, adding that she would be moving to various schools after the end of the session to get the feedback from the students about their keenness to participate in the "Youth Parliament".
She also gave the credit of this initiative to Secretary School Education GA Peer and Director School Education Jammu, Zahida Khan.
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