Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday suggested the House discuss a report related to child pornography so that ministries concerned could make suitable amendments to existing laws or a new legislation to check the menace. The Committee set up under senior Congress MP Jairam Ramesh on the initiative of Naidu had broadly sought to address two main issues — access of children to pornographic material on social media and circulation of pornographic material on social media in which children are abused. The Chairman made the suggestion after BJP MP Kailash Soni raised the issue of menance of child pornography during the Zero Hour and also citied certain recent incidents in this regard. He said the panel had given a “a very meaningful report” and it should be discussed during the ongoing session. “Let us have some time during this session to have discussions on that (report) and ministries concerned take note of those conclusions and then go ahead with making suitable amendments to law or any new law,” the Chairman said. The panel had made 40 recommendations, including making monitoring apps mandatory on all devices and amending the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the Information Technology Act. Meanwhile, Akhilesh Prasad Singh (Cong) said a second AIIMS was promised for Bihar, but no significant development on that front has take place in the past two years. The proposed AIIMS is to be set up in North Bihar. Another Congress MP Chhaya Verma said due to the increasing price of cooking gas, poor people were suffering and have not been able to refill LPG cylinders. She asked the government to roll-back the hike effected in LPG prices during the calendar year 2020.
