Why in News?
Increasing subordination of ‘Parliament’ in India’s ‘parliamentary democracy’ was debated in the context of diminished functioning of 17th Lok Sabha.
The Parliament of a country is central to the very idea of democracy assigned with the pivotal roles of framing legislation, ensuring accountability of governments and holding debates and discussion on various concerns.
Diminishing role of Parliament in India:
1. Decreasing Productivity of Sessions:
⦁ The Productivity of Lok Sabha is 33% and that of Rajya Sabha is just 24% in Budget Session of Parliament for 2023 .
⦁ Lok Sabha functioned only for 33% of its scheduled time (46 hours) and Rajya Sabha for 24% (32 hours).
⦁ The same was 123% in Lok Sabha and 90% in Rajya Sabha in the year 2022.
2. Legislative Paralysis:
⦁ Fewer than 10 Bills have been introduced or passed in each of the last four consecutive sessions.
⦁ The 17th Lok Sabha may turn out to be the shortest full term Lok Sabha since 1952.
⦁ Entering the final year of its term, the 17th Lok Sabha has functioned for 230 sitting days so far. Of all the Lok Sabhas that completed the full five-year term, the 16th Lok Sabha had the lowest sitting days (331).
⦁ With one more year remaining in the term, and 58 average sitting days a year, the 17th Lok Sabha is unlikely to sit for more than 331 days. This could make it the shortest full term Lok Sabha since 1952.
3. Lack of Debates and Discussions:
⦁ This session also saw the least amount of time spent on questions in the current Lok Sabha.
⦁ Question Hour functioned for 19% of scheduled time in Lok Sabha and 9% in Rajya Sabha. Only about 7% of starred questions were answered in either House.
4. Devices of Parliamentary Proceedings:
⦁ In the 17th Lok Sabha, only 11 short duration discussions and one half-an-hour discussion have been held so far.
⦁ In Rajya Sabha, under Rule 267, the proceedings of the House may be suspended with the permission of the Chairperson to discuss a matter of importance (analogous to adjournment motions in Lok Sabha). In this session, more than 150 notices were filed under this rule, none were accepted.
5. Private Member Bills:
⦁ No Private Member Bills were introduced or discussed.
6. No Deputy Speaker:
⦁ Article 93 of the Constitution states that Lok Sabha will choose two Members of the House to be Speaker and Deputy Speaker, as soon as possible.
⦁ The 17th Lok Sabha has not elected a Deputy Speaker even as it enters the final year of its five-year term.
7. Short-Circuiting Parliamentary Democracy with Ordinances:
⦁ In the first 30 years of our parliamentary democracy, there was one ordinance promulgated for every 10 Bills introduced in Parliament.
⦁ In the following 30 years, the ratio was two ordinances for every 10 Bills.
⦁ In the 16th Lok Sabha (2014-19), the number jumped to 3.5 ordinances for every 10 Bills.
⦁ In the current Lok Sabha it is, so far, 3.3 ordinances to every 10 Bills.
8. Decline in Functioning of Parliamentary Committees:
During the course of the 17th Lok Sabha, only 14 Bills have been referred for further examination so far. As per data from PRS, as little as 25% of the Bills introduced were referred to committees in the 16th Lok Sabha, as compared to 71% and 60% in the 15th and 14th Lok Sabha respectively.
This represents a declining trend of national legislation being subjected to expert scrutiny.
How to hold Executive responsible to Legislature?
Intra-Party Dissent:
First, in order to enact its agenda, the executive must command a majority in Parliament. This opens up the space for intra-party dissent, and an important role for ruling party parliamentarians — who are not members of the cabinet — to exercise a check over the executive.
Occasionally, ruling party backbenchers can even join forces with the Opposition to defeat unpopular Bills (as was the case with various Brexit deals in the U.K. House of Commons between 2017 and 2019).
Opposition Control:
Opposition itself is granted certain rights in Parliament, and certain limited control over parliamentary proceedings, in order to publicly hold the executive to account.
Independent office of Speaker:
The interests of Parliament against the executive are meant to be represented by the Speaker, a neutral and independent authority.
Upper House:
By embracing bicameralism: i.e., a second “Upper House” that acts as a revising chamber, where interests other than those of the brute majority are represented (in our case, that is the Rajya Sabha, acting as a council of states).
In India, however, each of these features has been diluted or erased over the years.
First, the possibility of intra-party dissent within Parliament has been stamped out by virtue of the Tenth Schedule to the Constitution, popularly known as the “anti-defection law” which penalises disobedience of the party whip with disqualification from the House altogether.
Intra-party dissent is far more difficult when the price is disqualification from Parliament.
Second, right from its inception, the Indian Constitution did not carve out any specific space for the political Opposition in the House.
In other words, the manner of proceedings in Parliament are under the complete control of the executive, with no real constitutional checks upon how that control is exercised.
Third, this is exacerbated by the fact that the Speaker, in our system, is not independent. The Speaker is not required to give up membership of their political party, and is not constitutionally obligated to act impartially.
This has led to an increasing trend, at both the central and the State levels, of Speakers acting in a partisan manner in order to advance the interests of the executive over the interests of the House.
Ex: When the ruling party wishes to avoid effective scrutiny in the Rajya Sabha over Bills, the Speaker simply classifies the Bill as a “money bill”, thus depriving the Rajya Sabha of the right to make amendments. This was seen most vividly in the case of the Aadhaar Act
Fourth, the role of the Upper House is undercut not only by the Speaker’s misclassification of Bills but also by the constitutionally-sanctioned ordinance making power.
An ordinance is nothing more than executive legislation; and while, in theory, it is meant to be used only for an emergency, while Parliament is not in session, in practice, it is used as a parallel process of law-making, especially when the executive wants to bypass the Upper House altogether.
Therefore, If we want to return to parliamentarianism, what manner of constitutional changes and reforms that it would require is to be discussed as early as possible.
Mains Questions:
Q: India can continue to be called as a parliamentary democracy, or it was gradually morphed into an executive democracy- Analyse.
Q: ‘It is not far from the truth to say that Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in Committee rooms is Congress at work.’ The universality of this statement seems to have stood the test of time and geography- Analyse.
Q: India has a parliament but there are, increasingly, questions whether India is truly a democracy- Comment.
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