Post lunch on a Friday is a quiet time during a parliamentary session. The government has no business on its agenda, and many Members of Parliament (MPs) use this opportunity to head back to their constituencies to be with their people. Other MPs use this time to discuss matters of national importan...
Over this week, the two Houses of Parliament have suspended 27 MPs between them, the latest being two AAP MPs and an independent MP from Rajya Sabha on Thursday. Lok Sabha has suspended four Congress MPs, and Rajya Sabha 23 MPs from the Trinamool Congress, DMK, TRS, CPI...
The differences between the government and the Opposition are hardening in the ongoing monsoon session. This week, Lok Sabha suspended four Members of Parliament (MPs) of the Congress for the rest of the session. The Rajya Sabha has suspended 19 members from different political p...
Hemant Tukaram Godse is the Lok Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) representing Nashik, Maharashtra. When the voters of Nashik first sent him to Parliament in 2014, he found himself in a peculiar position. His surname was considered unparliamentary. Parliamentary rules specify that presiding ...
In July of 1987, Mithilesh Kumar Sinha was the most protected man in the country. The authorities housed the frail 67-year-old man in a Lutyens bungalow. Police officers surrounded him, and a doctor checked on his health regularly. He headed an organisation called the Goodman’s party, which wa...
Hemant Tukaram Godse is the Lok Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) representing Nashik, Maharashtra. When the voters of Nashik first sent him to Parliament in 2014, he found himself in a peculiar position. His surname was considered unparliamentary. Parliamentary rules specify that presiding officers c...
The foundation of free and fair elections is the secrecy of the ballot. The Rajya Sabha elections are unique in that respect, where voting is not secret. The MLAs elect their state Rajya Sabha MPs, and as the process stands now, have to show the votes to their party’s representative....
The complexities of the anti-defection law have surfaced again in the recent developments in Maharashtra. There are several questions that need to be decided. Can the Speaker (or in his absence, the deputy Speaker) decide on a disqualification petition while a no-confidence motion is pending against...
A CAG report reveals that the State’s spending across sectors has been below the budgeted amount in the last few years
On May 26, the government of Uttar Pradesh presented its Budget for financial year 2022-23. Projecting a total expenditure of ₹5,82,956 crore (excluding debt repayment), th...
The unfolding political crisis in Maharashtra has thrown the spotlight on the anti-defection law, and the roles of the Deputy Speaker and the Governor.
On Wednesday (June 22), the ruling Shiv Sena called a meeting of all its MLAs in Mumbai. Some of its legislators have aligned...
The Indirect Tax paradigm in india changed with the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in July 2017. The underlying compass of taxation changed, too as GST is collected at the place of supply of goods/services as compared to the earlier regime where tax was collected at the source. G...
Our Constitution promises freedom of speech and expression to everyone except MPs and MLAs. They lost their right to speak their mind in 1985. It is this right to speak freely that former Congress leader Kabil Sibal wants to secure for all elected representatives. While...
There is never a dull moment in our politics. A week ago in Maharashtra, the only blip on the radar was the Shiv Sena's candidate Sanjay Pawar losing and the Bharatiya Janta Party's Dhananjay Mahadik winning the Rajya Sabha elections. After the victory, media reports quoted&nb...
In his final remarks before the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949, BR Ambedkar said, “The Constitution can provide only the organs of State such as the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. The factors on which the working of those organs of the State depends are the people and...
Earlier this week, the West Bengal legislative assembly passed a bill to make the chief minister the chancellor of 31 state public universities. The governor of West Bengal had earlier held this position.
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Who will be BJP’s and Opposition’s presidential candidates? There are many theories and names. Let’s note one fact, though: All of our Presidents other than President APJ Abdul Kalam have been political personalities.
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The President and Parliament are joined together by a line in our Constitution. Article 79 states, “There shall be a Parliament for the Union which shall consist of the President and two Houses to be known respectively as the Council of States and the House of the People.” Beyond th...
The Ministry of Education has been allocated Rs 1.04 lakh crore in this year’s budget. This allocation constitutes 3% of the central government’s estimated expenditure for 2022-23. The allocation to the National Education Mission is the fifth-largest among all major schemes at Rs 39,553 ...
You are about to start hearing the name of justice Ranjit Singh Sarkaria. He retired as a judge of the Supreme Court (SC) in 1981 after serving for seven years. His profile on the SC’s website records that early on in his career, he was part of a two-member committee to translate the Constitut...
The number of days that the Punjab Assembly is in session each year has been a persistent downward slope, the lowest being during the term of the 15th Assembly in 2021 (11 days) Highlights Days in session hit record-low in 2021, yearly average at a mere 14-days All these Bills were passed on the sam...
The Assembly met for only 21 days a year, on average. The Deputy Speaker of the Assembly was elected after more than four years of constitution of the Assembly. The Assembly met only five times for 10 or more days. Each of these were budget sessions.
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Highlights
The Assembly passed 92 Bills in its term. Of these, 91 were introduced and passed in the same session.
Only four Bills were referred to Committees for further examination.
The tenure of the 7th Assembly marks the lowest number of sitting days in a year since 1989. The 7th Goa ...
The Supreme Court of India will soon hear a petition to remove the stay on the Haryana State Employment of Local Candidates Act, or the Haryana Act, that reserves 75% of jobs in the private sector in the State for local residents. The Act applies to jobs that pay up to ₹30,000 per month, and employe...
Halfway through its five-year term, the current Lok Sabha has passed more than 100 laws. To put that number in context, its predecessor, the 16th Lok Sabha, had during its entire term passed 133 laws, which itself was 15% more than the number passed by the 15th Lok Sabha. While this scorching legisl...
The framers of the Constitution and members of Parliament had highlighted the concerns in our founding document, many of which were rejected during its framing, that took almost three years, and it came into effect on January 26, 1950.
Space entrepreneur Elon Musk would have loved Const...
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...
