The monsoon session’s disruptions have become more common, and legislation has been rushed through. These are warning signs that parliamentary functioning needs to be overhauled immediately. If the current trend continues, the new Parliament building will be a modern and spacious home for an ineffective institution.
The session was cancelled due to political disagreements over topics such as the alleged Pegasus phone hacking and farm laws. Only one exception could be made. The ruling party and the opposition came to a rare agreement on a constitutional amendment bill clarifying that states can keep their lists of socially and educationally disadvantaged people. However, the amendment debate was an outlier in the larger storey of how Parliament passed legislation during the session.
While passing 15 other laws, the two Houses went through the motions. Despite the ongoing disruptions, the Lok Sabha passed a law in less than 10 minutes on average, and the Rajya Sabha passed each law in less than half an hour. These laws were passed more for show than for substance. There were 13 bills in the Lok Sabha in which no member of Parliament (MP) other than the minister in charge of the bill spoke.
The political debate in the two Houses on a law is often in addition to a careful examination of the government’s legislative proposal by a parliamentary committee. And this aspect of legislative scrutiny continued to weaken in the monsoon session. The government introduced 11 bills in the session and pushed them through Parliament without scrutiny by standing committees. Only 12% of the government’s legal proposals have been sent to committees for scrutiny in the current Lok Sabha. This number was 27% in the 16th (2014-19), 71% in the 15th (2009-14) and 60% in the 14th (2004- 09) Lok Sabha.
Almost all of the government’s legislative agenda was completed amid the shouting of slogans and the raising of placards. An amendment to delicense electricity distribution was the only significant piece of legislation it did not bring before Parliament. A law to end retrospective taxation and another to increase private sector participation in public sector insurance companies were also passed by the government.
