As the Winter Session of Parliament begins on Monday under the shadow of a possible stalemate between the government and the Opposition over a discussion on Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, concerns persist about whether the House will function effectively, a question increasingly tied to concerns about the health of Parliament as an institution.
Over the years, legislative productivity has declined sharply, with disruptions becoming routine and deliberations too steadily shrinking. Former Lok Sabha Secretary-General P D T Achary warned that diminishing deliberation undermines the very purpose of Parliament. “This is a very disturbing trend … even before the last 10 years … The Opposition raises issues and wants them discussed. But the government does not give importance to that and looks only at its business.”
Terming the passage of Bills as a “mockery of legislative business”, Achary said Article 107 of the Constitution requires Bills to be agreed to by both Houses, which is impossible “if it isn’t understood and discussed.” “The erosion stems from a breakdown in dialogue. There must be regular meetings between the Leader of the House, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi,” he said.
A look at the statistics of Parliament during the Monsoon Session between July 21 and August 21 is in line with Achary’s observations. According to PRS Legislative Research, the Lok Sabha functioned just 29% of its scheduled time and the Rajya Sabha for 34% during the session. The institution’s core mechanisms of accountability, such as Question Hour, were also badly hit, with the Lower House completing only 23% of its scheduled Question Hour time while the Upper House managed only 6%.
Though eight Bills were passed during the session, some were cleared with minimal debate. The Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, for example, was approved by both Houses in a single day after just six minutes of discussion in the Lok Sabha and 23 minutes in the Rajya Sabha. Even the long-pending Merchant Shipping Bill, 2024, was discussed only for 20 minutes in the Lok Sabha and 10 minutes in the Rajya Sabha. Meanwhile, 50% of the Lok Sabha’s functional time was spent on a single subject — Operation Sindoor.
Chandigarh MP Manish Tewari of the Congress said these developments were of concern. “Parliament cannot be a forum to rubber-stamp legislation of the government… The legislature has completely knee-capped itself,” he said, adding that Standing Committees were becoming “redundant” as fewer Bills are referred to them, and claimed that the neutrality of presiding officers was now “more the exception than the rule.”
Congress’s Rajya Sabha MP Syed Naseer Husain stressed that functional responsibility ultimately lay with the government. “The government’s agenda comes as Bills that need to be discussed. The Opposition is willing … When they are not accommodated, the Opposition also has the right to protest,” he said.
The government placed the blame on the Opposition for the gridlock that has marked parliamentary sessions of late amid a breakdown in communication channels between it and the Opposition. “If the entire agenda of the Opposition is driven by one or two failed leaders, it is very difficult … After all, who are the biggest victims? It is the Opposition MPs,” Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said. BJP spokesperson Anil Baluni echoed the view. “We want discussions in Parliament … The people are rejecting them (Opposition), but they are insistent on not letting Parliament function. The people are watching this behaviour of theirs,” he told The Indian Express.
What the numbers say
In contrast to the Monsoon Session, the Budget Session this year saw unusually high productivity — 111% in the Lok Sabha and 112% in the Rajya Sabha — with Question Hour functioning better as well. The Budget Session of 2024 had shown similar numbers.
Yet these are exceptions in a broader downward trajectory. For instance, the 2024 Winter Session saw productivity plunge again to 52% in the Lok Sabha and 39% in the Rajya Sabha.
Across the five years of the 17th Lok Sabha (2019–2024), the Lok Sabha functioned for 88% of its scheduled time and the Rajya Sabha 73%, but this came with the fewest sittings of any full-term Lok Sabha since 1952 — partly because it met only 33 days in 2020 due to Covid-19.
Notably, 11 of its 15 sessions were adjourned early, and it became the first Lok Sabha without a Deputy Speaker. The absence of a Deputy Speaker even in the ongoing 18th Lok Sabha highlights, for many observers, institutional imbalance and the unwillingness of the Treasury Benches to accommodate a confrontational Opposition.
A longer historical trend reinforces the picture of institutional erosion. Annual sittings have fallen from 121 days (1952–70) to 68 days since 2000. The first Lok Sabha met for an average of 135 days a year; the 17th met for only 55. Scrutiny, too, has weakened. While 60% or more Bills were sent to committees during the 14th and 15th Lok Sabhas, the figure dropped to 20% or below in the 16th and 17th. Time spent on budget discussions has also steadily declined since the 1990s.
However, to blame only the current Opposition for the fall in productivity will be inaccurate. The decline in productivity is a structural and cross-government problem. The 15th Lok Sabha during the UPA-2 regime remains one of the worst-performing, functioning for just 61% of its scheduled time; the Rajya Sabha that term worked for only 66%. Earlier Houses — such as the 13th and 14th Lok Sabhas — had much higher productivity at 91% and 87%, respectively.
Political scientists, too, have noted the signs of institutional erosion in Parliament. In the 2017 volume, The Indian Parliament and Democratic Transformation, Panjab University professor Ashutosh Kumar wrote about how the enhanced representative character of Parliament had not led to “institutional well-being”.
“The apathy on the part of the members as well as the government in the successive Parliaments has resulted in a situation that most of the bills, including the important ones, hardly undergo the mandatory three reading stages, some of them are passed in a matter of minutes without any fruitful discussion,” he wrote.
Kumar also pointed to a “perceptible decline in the quality of debate/informed discussion” as deliberations in both Houses are much shorter and “absenteeism has reached a stage that many times even the required quorum as mandated by the Constitution is lacking”.