The winter session of Parliament ended bitterly with political parties accusing each other of stifling debate. The national legislature passed legal proposals on surrogacy, assisted reproductive technology and dam safety during the session. And towards its end, the government pushed through a conten...
There is one word that describes Parliament in 2021: Disrupted. Last year, the national legislature was missing during the coronavirus pandemic, and only met for 33 days. This year, people hoped it would make up for lost time. The expectation was that the institution would devote itself to addressin...
On 16 December, 1971, Members of Parliament (MPs) were anxiously waiting for news from Dacca (now Dhaka). The liberation of Bangladesh with the support of Indian armed forces was imminent. MPs took different approaches, waiting for more information to come in.
Some were in the Lok Sabha chamber d...
The DNA Technology (Use and Application) Bill and the Personal Data Protection Bill, likely to come up in the ongoing winter session of Parliament, provide a framework and safeguards for using our data by businesses and the government.
Laws are blunt instruments. Changes brought by them reverbera...
The Winter Session of Parliament began on a stormy note on Monday. Both Houses saw disruptions as Lok Sabha passed the Bill repealing the three farm laws without any discussion, and Rajya Sabha passed it after a brief intervention by Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge.
After that, ...
There is a simple test to judge a parliamentary session. Former Lok Sabha Speaker GMC Balayogi came up with it. At 46, he was the youngest Speaker, and according to him, “All’s well if it doesn’t end in Well.” He was referring to the well of the House. It is the area before t...
Legislative business in Parliament has suffered in the last two years. Last year, the government did not convene the winter session due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This year the budget session was cut short due to assembly elections. Then in the monsoon session, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha passed multip...
In December of 1958, a Member of Parliament (MP) questioned the Finance Minister about a valuable gift received by Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru. Earlier that year, Indians in Hong Kong had gifted the Prime Minister his weight in gold (64 kg) on his 70th birthday. Nehru must have been aware of th...
In January 1930, the Madras Legislative Council was discussing a law on prostitution. A fundamental point of contention was how the law should define a prostitute. The definition before the council was: “Prostitute means a woman who offers her body for indiscriminate sexual intercourse for hir...
The Royal Academy of Arts has held a summer exhibition in London for the last 250 years. Art enthusiasts eagerly await the exhibition’s opening every year to see works by established and aspiring artists. Such is its draw that the Academy displayed Lutyen’s and Baker’s design of th...
Jignesh Mewani, an independent MLA from Gujarat, has said he has joined the Congress “in spirit” as he could not formally do so, having been elected as an independent.
The Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, popularly known as the anti-defection law, specifies the circumstan...
Tribunals function as a parallel mechanism to the traditional court system. In India, some tribunals are at the level of subordinate courts with appeals lying with the High Court, while some others are at the level of High Courts with appeals lying with the Supreme Court. Tribunals were established ...
The visible part of a vibrant legislature is members of Parliament (MPs) passionately debating critical national issues that shape the country. But a secretariat independent of the government, working tirelessly in the background supporting legislative functioning, is the backbone of Parliament. Two...
The recent Monsoon Session of Parliament is proof that the speed of passing laws trumps their rigorous scrutiny in our legislative process. These pages have been replete with statistics about the two Houses passing laws in the din in a matter of minutes. Our national legislature has similarly enacte...
Vithalbhai Jhaverbhai Patel's presence should constantly remind our parliamentarians about their responsibility to the Constitution and people
In August of 1925, there was excitement in Simla. Members of the legislative assembly were in town to participate in the session of the national leg...
Parliament is a venue for passionate debate and often slogan-shouting, as was evident in the recently curtailed Monsoon Session. In its debating chambers, every Member of Parliament is audible while making an argument or silencing an opponent. Being heard here is not simply a function of lung power ...
Parliament is a forum for politics and discussion. Its sessions have a dual purpose. Members of Parliament across the aisle use this national forum to draw attention to problems faced by the people. They use different parliamentary mechanisms to keep...
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Parliament can change its rules to give MPs more teeth in questioning the government and empower its committees to become critical stakeholders in the law-making process. This will increase the stake that MPs have in the effective functioning of the institution, and disincentivise them from disrupti...
The disruption of the proceedings over the years means that the debate happens everywhere other than in the House, which is undermining the institution
Have you heard of Rufus E Miles? If yes, then you know that in the late 1940s, he described what is currently happening in our Parliament. If you...
Disruption is replacing discussion as the foundation of our legislative functioning. The passionate debate that should inform the country is taking place everywhere other than in Parliament. Last week, this newspaper reported that the government is considering curtailing the monsoon session of Parli...
The political deadlock on the repealing of farm laws and the Pegasus phone-hacking controversy has washed out the first two weeks of the monsoon session. Slogan-shouting has become the background sound for parliamentary debate, and the Parliament television crew are locked in a contest of camera ang...
Parliament did not pass any laws in the first week of the ongoing monsoon session. Continuous slogan-shouting in the two houses on farm laws and the Pegasus hacking controversy washed out the first four days of the 19-day monsoon session of Parliament. The expectation was that in the second week, po...
One of the earliest walkouts occurred more than a century ago in the Bombay Legislative Council. In 1901, when the British administration was passing a law harmful to farmers’ interests, Indian members of the council such as Pherozeshah Mehta and Gopal Krishna Gokhale vehemently opposed the la...
The Maharashtra Legislative Assembly has been without a Speaker for most of this year. Last week, it concluded its two-day Monsoon Session without electing a Speaker. The previous Speaker was Nana Patole of the Congress, elected to the post in 2019 following the Assembly elections. Since Patole&rs...
Five years have passed since the enactment of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC). The code provides for time-bound resolution of insolvency among companies and individuals.
The provisions relating to individual insolvency resolution, however, have not yet been operationalised, except ...
Earlier this week, the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal approved the setting up of a Legislative Council in the state. It was a promise made by the party in its election manifesto. West Bengal’s Legislative Council was abolished 50 years ago by a coalition government of Left partie...
The newly elected West Bengal Assembly, with 294 seats, will have fewer political parties than last time, with its legislators representing 3 parties compared to 8 in 2016. In the Tamil Nadu and Kerala Assemblies, it is the opposite. In Tamil Nadu (234 seats), the number of parties represented in th...
The central government has repromulgated the ordinance that establishes a commission for air quality management in the National Capital Region, or the Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas Ordinance, 2020 (https://bit.ly/3duZmHW). This raises questions ...
The session saw Parliament doing a lot of work. But effective legislatures are measured by their outcomes and not by their output. It is time for the government and Opposition parties to prioritise their legislative responsibilities.
Poor planning and check-marking of the law-making process are t...
A simple line in our Constitution lays the groundwork for the Budget Session of Parliament. This opening line in Article 112 states that for every financial year a statement of the estimated receipts and expenditure of the government shall be laid before the legislature. This statement, commonly ref...
The Budget session of Parliament ended on Thursday, two weeks ahead of the original plan, as many political leaders are busy with campaigning for the forthcoming State Assembly elections. This follows the trend of the last few sessions: the Budget session of 2020 was curtailed ahead of the lockdown ...
The 2021-22 budget process concluded on Wednesday in Parliament with Rajya Sabha debating the Finance Bill, 2021 before returning it to Lok Sabha for enactment.
Finance Bills are not referred to Parliamentary Committees for detailed scrutiny.
The 2021-22 budget process concluded on Wednesday i...
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the railways' finances along with the Union Budget on February 1, 2021. Earlier this week, both Houses of Parliament discussed the working of the Railways Ministry and the budgetary allocations to the Ministry. In light of this, we discuss some issue...
On Tuesday, nominated MP Swapan Dasgupta resigned from Rajya Sabha, a year before completion of his term. Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra had raised the issue of his disqualification from Rajya Sabha under the anti-defection law, after the BJP had fielded Dasgupta as...
Legislatures have been called the “grand inquest of the nation”. About 270 years ago, British parliamentarian, William Pitt used the expression to describe the House of Commons. The occasion was the proposed investigations into Sir Robert Walpole’s government. Pitt told his colleag...
The events in Puducherry highlight, yet again, the absurdity of the anti-defection law. In what has now become the standard operating procedure, several MLAs from the treasury benches resigned, lowering the numbers required for a no-confidence motion to succeed. This formula has been ...
Puducherry Lt Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan has asked Chief Minister V Narayanasamy to prove his government’s majority in the Vidhan Sabha. According to her direction, the House will meet on Monday, and the only agenda before it will be the confidence vote.
The L-G has also dir...
With assembly elections three months away, the confidence motion’s outcome will be unimportant in Puducherry’s history. But the event will highlight the failure of the anti-defection law and raise an important question. How long will a law which continues to stifle debate in our legislat...
The Central Hall of Parliament doubles up as a portrait gallery. On its walls hang portraits of leaders who shaped the destiny of India. If a viceroy from British India were to walk into the hall today, his mind will find a different commonality between the portraits of M K Gandhi, Bal Gangadhar Til...
The Supreme Court’s order on keeping the farm laws in abeyance crosses the line of separation between the legislature and judiciary. In these pages, Pratap Bhanu Mehta (‘A shapeshifting justice’, IE, January 13), wrote that the order is “terrible constitutional precedent...
In the ongoing stalemate between protesting farmers and the Centre, the government has repeated its offer of keeping the three contentious farm laws on hold for one to one-and-a-half years, while the farmers have rejected the offer and insisted that the laws be repealed. Over the...
The Maharashtra government introduced the Shakti Bill in the state Legislative Assembly in December 2020 to curb sexual offences committed against women and children. The Bill proposes amendments to existing laws on crimes against women and children and provides for stricter punishment, including de...
The year 2021 began with an improvement in the economic outlook for the fiscal year 2020-21. December GST collections increased by 12 percent over the same month in 2019; the government has estimated a contraction of 7.7 percent in 2020-21 GDP, better than the initial projections after lockdown. The...
