Books that get straight to the point are refreshing. The author works hard to separate the grain from the chaff, letting the reader quickly reach the crux of the matter. India that is Bharat: An Introduction to the Constitutional Debates by P Rajeeve is one such book.
Rajeeve is current...
The Karnataka Cabinet approved and then put on hold a Bill mandating reservation in private sector jobs for local residents. The Bill not only makes the State unattractive for investments, but may also violate the Constitution.
The Bill defines a local candidate as anyone who was born in Karnatak...
Delhi churns every five years. The general election results decide the political fate of incumbent Members of Parliament (MPs), and there are new public representatives and their ideas for the country. Besides its broader impact on Parliament and governance, this churning has a personal dimension. E...
A contested election for the post of Lok Sabha Speaker is a sign of a broadening divide between treasury and opposition benches. Before Independence, contests for the position of president (equivalent of modern-day Speaker) were quite common. In the first election in 1925, Vithalbhai Patel defeated ...
The first session of the 18th Lok Sabha will start on Monday. Before the House can begin its legislative functioning, the newly elected members will have to take the oath of Members of Parliament (MP), which is provided in the Constitution.
The day will begin in Rashtrapati Bhavan, where Bha...
In the recently concluded general elections, voters did not give the Bharatiya Janata Party a complete majority. The BJP, with its 240 Lok Sabha seats, is forming the government along with its coalition partners of the National Democratic Alliance.
Coalitions at the national level came to public ...
Three days after the 2024 Lok Sabha election results, in a meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on Friday (June 7), Prime Minister Narendra Modi was unanimously elected as the coalition’s Parliamentary Party leader. The event took place at the Cent...
The Lok Sabha elections are in full swing. The third voting phase, scheduled for May 7, is a crucial milestone. This phase will witness all 26 seats in Gujarat and the remaining half of 14 seats in Karnataka going to polls. Once this phase concludes, voters will have exercised their franchise for mo...
Elections are the heartbeat of a democracy. When India became independent, sceptics thought a poor and illiterate nation would fail to keep democracy alive.
Elections are the heartbeat of a democracy. When India became independent, sceptics thought a poor and illiterate nation would fail to keep ...
In 1920, Delhi resident Abdul Majid came to the attention of the British government. He was someone who would ordinarily not be on the administration’s radar. His description varied from petty trader to sweetmeat seller and confectioner. In November that year, he filed nomination papers to con...
What led to SC’s judgment on legislators & bribes? What had SC said earlier? What are the implications?
Supreme Court has overturned its 1998 judgment on the PV Narasimha Rao bribery case. The earlier judgment protected MPs and MLAs for accepting bribes to vote ...
Last month, the Election Commission of India (ECI) held polls to fill 56 Rajya Sabha seats from 14 states. Without the vibrancy of a direct election, Rajya Sabha polls are usually lacklustre affairs. There are no big political rallies or a large electorate that candidates need to reach out...
Financial support to political parties has a chequered history in India. The striking down of electoral bonds scheme by Supreme Court is opportunity to rethink the framework regulating corporate contributions in our political process. Before this, taking stock of developments over the last 75 years ...
North-South politics hogged the limelight towards the end of the 17th Lok Sabha. First, Congress MP from Karnataka, D K Suresh, said that the people of South India might have to demand a separate country if “the injustice of not providing the rightful share of taxes (to the southern states) co...
The absence of procedural mechanisms for deliberating on contentious issues is at the heart of parliamentary dysfunction. It has led to the current impasse between the government and the Opposition and the resulting unprecedented situation. Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha suspended 141 Opposition Members ...
At about 10 am on September 24, 1951, Hucheshwar Gurusidha Mudgal stood up to clear his name in Parliament. Mudgal was a member of the Provisional Parliament, the national legislature that preceded the first elected Lok Sabha in 1952.
September had been a busy month for this law-ma...
A short history of India’s legislative chambers shows why the December 13 breach shouldn’t lead to limited public access
The inviolability of legislatures is at the heart of democracy. Yesterday, two irresponsible citizens broke this basic tenet. They opened a smoke canister and jumpe...
On December 8, the Lok Sabha expelled one of its members, Mahua Moitra, from the membership of the House. The minister for parliamentary affairs Pralhad Joshi, moved a motion for her expulsion. It stated that Moitra’s conduct (of sharing her parliamentary credentials and accepting money and am...
There are a few defining dates in our country’s democratic journey; November 26 is one of them. On this day in 1949, the Constituent Assembly adopted our Constitution after extensive deliberations. Following a suggestion by six-time Lok Sabha MP Bhartruhari Mahtab, in 2015, the government...
The Government has introduced three Bills to replace the core laws, i.e., the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860, the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), 1973, and the Indian Evidence Act (IEA), 1872, which form the basis of the criminal justice system. These Bills are being examined by the...
India, Australia and South Africa are currently the top three teams in the cricket World Cup. All three are former British colonies with a rich cricketing history and a spirited following. And wherever there are people and passions involved, politics and policy follow close behind. The political par...
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi recently remarked that the upcoming electoral contest in Rajasthan was “very close” but he hoped his party would pull it off nevertheless. There have been a few close elections in the state, and one of them was in 1967.
The general elections that...
The need for the building was born out of the constitutional reforms of 1919 known also as the Montagu Chelmsford Reforms.
Nostalgia vied for space with politics on Monday as the special session of Parliament opened to bid farewell to the grand colonial building that nurtured a nascent democracy ...
We can look at the 75-year journey of our Parliament through many lenses. One could be statistical. Like the number of days that Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha worked, and the number of laws they made. Or, it could be about the Members of Parliament (MPs) whose debates shaped legislation, cornered the go...
Resources and changes in Constitution can help strengthen Parliament but key is for legislature to respect it as a forum for debate
The much anticipated special session of Parliament begins today. There was intense speculation about its purpose when the government announced th...
Parliamentary Committees serve an important role in scrutinising the work of the Government and improving the quality of Bills brought before Parliament. The effectiveness of Parliamentary Committees is crucial to the effective functioning of Parliament. Reports submitted by the Committees allow for...
The Indian Parliament is the country’s most open institution regarding data about its functioning. It records its daily proceedings meticulously, and reports of its committees are rich in detail and insight. Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha have made their records electronically accessible ...
Home Minister Amit Shah surprised the nation on August 11, the last day of the Monsoon Session by introducing three Bills in Lok Sabha to overhaul the country’s criminal justice system. The minister told the House that the colonial mindset of giving punishment, rather than justi...
The no confidence debate showed govt-opposition acrimony has reached new levels. Parliament can look at other democracies’ legislatures for ways to reduce political noise
The no confidence motion is a rarely used parliamentary tool opposition uses to hold government accountable. In the 75 y...
On August 10, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government defeated the opposition’s no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha.
After that, Prahlad Joshi, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, stated that Congress party MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury repeatedly interrupted the PM and othe...
The NDA has a comfortable majority in Parliament, and the outcome of the no-confidence motion is a forgone conclusion. The debates will set the tone for 2024
The Lok Sabha is expected to debate Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi’s no-confidence motion against prime minister (PM) Narendra Modi's g...
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Wednesday admitted a motion of no-confidence against the government moved by Congress Deputy Leader in Lok Sabha Gaurav Gogoi after a headcount of 50 MPs required under the rules. The motion has been supported by constituents of the opposition INDIA alliance and the Bha...
In 1952, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha published their respective Rules of Procedure. These Rules laid down the details of how the two Houses would function. They also specified the different procedural mechanisms by which Members of Parliament (MPs) could participate in the functioning of the two ...
The upcoming session will likely be stormy. But beyond the rows, it will hold cues on Opposition unity, parliamentary strategy and the run-up to 2024
The monsoon session of Parliament that starts on July 20 will be stormy. The government and Opposition are both girding up for the upcoming general...
The NCP churn is a test case for the Supreme Court’s guidelines laid down in the Shiv Sena order. It shows, once again, the weakness of the anti-defection law
Internal conflicts within a political party always follow a pattern. After factional disagreements become public, each side tries to...
Modi joins an elite club of leaders who addressed the US Congress more than once. This moment is ripe for our Parliament to imbibe a few good practices
Only five world leaders have addressed a joint session of the United States (US) Senate and House of Representatives more than once. Former Briti...
Roughly a century ago, when the foundation stone of the original Parliament House was laid, the building was an afterthought. In the new capital city of Delhi, the focus of finance and attention was the Governor-General’s (President’s) House.
The Council House was built to accommodate...
A modern infrastructure for the functioning of our national legislature is essential. With the inauguration of the new Parliament, we will have a state-of-the-art facility, enabling more convenience and efficiency in the sessions of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Parliament is also investing in tech...
Two Constitution Benches of the Supreme Court of India delivered important judgments last week. The first case decided that the Delhi government headed by the Chief Minister — and not the Lieutenant Governor appointed by the central government — will control civil services working for th...
Are you sure we are winning so comfortably?” the senior Congress leader’s voice on the phone sounded anxious. It was the night before counting day in Karnataka where an AxisMyIndia exit poll for India Today predicted a big win for the Congress. I asked the leader why he was so ...
The Tamil Nadu government led by Chief Minister M K Stalin and the state’s Governor R N Ravi have been at loggerheads for some time. An ongoing disagreement is regarding the inordinate delay in the Governor assenting to Bills passed by the state legislature.
Read mo...
In 1926, while writing in the Asiatic Review journal, parliamentary reporter Edwin Haward compared the proceedings of the House of Commons in London with the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi, and decided in favour of the latter.
Read more.
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The role of governors is in the news again. Their actions across several states — Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal — have been questioned. Recently, the Supreme Court had to hear a case where the governor of Punjab did not summon the assembly after the cabinet’s recomme...
The Supreme Court ruling devising a three-member committee to select the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and Election Commissioners (ECs) was a landmark judgment. The committee is going to consist of the Prime Minister, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha or the leader of the single la...
The instance where the Kerala High Court, in January this year, suspended the verdict passed by the Kavaratti District and Sessions Court (in an attempt to murder case) in which the then sitting Member of Parliament (MP) of Lakshadweep and Nationalist Congress Party leader P.P. Mohamm...
On February 9, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge wrote to Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar protesting the “directions…made by the Chair to authenticate six observations” he had made during his speech in the House the previous day. Kharge pointed out that Pa...
The 1970 Budget is not remembered for the procedural slip-up but for the change in its tone. Until then, Budget speeches were a dry recitation of facts as FMs had yet to start using poetry and couplets.
Saturday, February 28, 1970, was a special Budget day in Parliament. Prime Minister Indira Gan...
In the history of Indian democracy, the constitutional crisis in Uttar Pradesh in 1964 is one of the earliest examples of a confrontation between the judiciary and the legislature that led to the “derailment” of the “governance apple cart”.
Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar ...
Laws related to religious conversions repeatedly made headlines in 2022. During the year, the state legislatures in Karnataka and Haryana made laws prohibiting forced religious conversions. A few months before elections in Himachal Pradesh, the state legislature amended the freedom of...
This year, Parliament will move from its 90-plus-year-old building to a new one. As part of that transition, it should reimagine its rules to make the institution more deliberative and one that scrutinises laws more thoroughly.
2022 was a turbulent year for our national legislature. There were co...
