A Twitter handle that brings you Parliament bite-size

NEW DELHI: A Twitter account posts bite-sized blow-by-blow updates from Parliament. Peppered with gifs ranging from Spongebob Squarepants to the Simpsons, @HasParlAdjYet or “Has Parliament Adjourned Yet” speaks the language of the internet as it livetweets the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. It has even found followers among politicians such as Congress’ Priyanka Chaturvedi and AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi.
Started in February 2016, the account reports what our MPs say in Parliament including stray comments, jokes, the mood of the house, and the frequent chaos.The livetweets often run late into the night. Public policy professionals Kavitha KK from New Delhi and KS Yashaswini from Chennai do the bulk of the live tweeting. Delhi-based lawyer Sowmya Rao and science writer Sandhya Ramesh from Bengaluru also make up the team, though they say their participation is not as regular. Today, lawyers, public policy experts, and even some MPs make up their follower base of over 4,200.
Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha proceedings are not only telecast live on TV, but also webcast online. Proceedings, tabled questions, and answers are also available publicly. How then, does this Twitter handle add anything? “Often people do not have the time to consume this content in the format in which it is available. With tweets, it is possible in short bite-sized formats. You can get a quick sense of what happened,” says Rao of her colleagues who happen to be former LAMP fellows and are familiar with the functioning and the people of Parliament.
Even those present inside the House have found use of the Twitter account, they say. “Some MPs lack the facilities to quickly put up on social media what they do in Parliament. They simply retweet us or quote our tweet to confirm they raised an issue,” says K S Yashaswini. Rao feels their work with this Twitter account can be developed into something bigger. “We have discussed the possibility to take it in the direction of citizen-government engagement,” she says.
Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi thinks the account is a “fun” way to educate those young people who spend a large chunk of their time online. “I too keep learning from the handle from the way people interact with it. It tells one how to connect with these citizens and speak their language,” says Chaturvedi, who follows their updates to keep up with Parliament proceedings while traveling.
One of their tweets in late March mentioned an intervention by Ram Nath Thakur of JDU, who asked that the union ministry of railways look into a direct train from Samastipur to Delhi and Chennai. The railway ministry responded to it on Twitter itself. @RailMinIndia tagged another department in the reply, and tweeted: “kindly do the needful”
The handle actually started as a joke. This was late in 2015, when the Rajya Sabha saw a spate of adjournments due to disruptions. “I just registered a domain name called hasparliamentadjournedyet.com,” says Ramesh. “Then we thought, why not make it a thing,” says Yashaswini, who along with Kavitha would heavily tweet about Parliament proceedings back then. Those behind the handle had met coordinating relief work during the Chennai flood victims in December 2015.
Ever since the four started the handle, they say they have frequently come across people on Twitter who do not know the various ways in which Parliament proceedings can be accessed. They also came across the perception that Parliament proceedings are dense and boring. “There is a lot of humour and chatter and much of it does not get reported,” says Kavitha.