Decline of Parliament

India Review
ISSN: 1473-6489 (Print) 1557-3036 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/find20
The Decline of the Indian Parliament
Mahendra Prasad Singh
To cite this article: Mahendra Prasad Singh (2015) The Decline of the Indian Parliament, India
Review, 14:3, 352-376, DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2015.1066216
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India Review, vol. 14, no. 3, 2015, pp. 352–376
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN 1473-6489 print/1557-3036 online
DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2015.1066216
The Decline of the Indian Parliament

MAHENDRA PRASAD SINGH
Looking back for the roots of the Parliament in Indian history, we do not find feu-
dal antecedents such as the Lords and Commons in the United Kingdom and the
three Estates in France. Direct democratic institutions of Sabhas, Samitis, and Vidathas
and post-Vedic republican ganasanghas were superseded by the rise of monarchical-
bureaucratic states in ancient India. This political pattern of benevolent despotism
remained largely unchanged in medieval India. The Sultans of Delhi tended to be chosen
by the Turkish and/or Afghan nobles. The liberal and orthodox factions of the Muslim-
dominated Mughal nobility in alliance with successive monarchs influenced state policy
as well as successions. But they lacked the crystallization and institutionalization of
medieval European political institutions. Most important for our purpose here, they
lacked any semblance of representative and responsible government. Panchayats are
supposed to have existed through India’s hoary past, but besides being non-civic
(caste-based) before their statutory reincarnation after independence, they were/are
instruments of local government.
The immediate source of the Parliament of India was the Constituent Assembly
of India that drafted the constitution of independent India. The historic significance
of the first Parliament elected under this constitution in 1951–52 is that its first and
second chambers, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, were both unique in Indian
political experience. The former was the first directly elected representative body with
the government of the day fully responsible to it, whereas the latter was the first federal
second chamber in India’s checkered history. If Athens was the school of the ancient
Greek city states, New Delhi was deservedly seen as the school of the new states of the
Afro-Asian world in the post-World War II, postcolonial period.
Not just the institution of Parliament but parliamentary democracy per se came
under a cloud during the authoritarian Emergency regime of Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi (1975–77) for about eighteen months under Article 352 of the constitution
(national emergency provisions), when the Parliament, with the opposition put behind
bars, was used as a cloak for unconstitutional power. The 1977 general elections restored
democracy and authoritarian amendments to the constitution were undone. But the
phenomenon of the decline of Parliament which perceptibly set in during the post-
Nehru era has not been reversed. This paper seeks to examine the major indicators and
reasons for this persistent dysfunctionality.
Mahendra Prasad Singh is a former Professor of Political Science at the University of Delhi and is cur-
rently an honorary Senior Fellow in the Center for Multilevel Federalism, Institute of Social Sciences,
New Delhi, India.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.
com/find.
Decline of Parliament 353
In the following sections, I first set the stage for analyzing the decline of Parliament
and its bicameral structure in India. The thesis of parliamentary decay and decline
is elaborated in terms of indicators internal to Parliament as well as challenges from
the executive and the judiciary as also sponsored and autonomous civil society ven-
tures into Parliament’s law-making turf. The last point is illustrated by the National
Advisory Council (NAC) appointed by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance
(UPA) governments (2004–09 and 2009–14) chaired by Congress party President Sonia
Gandhi and the joint Lokpal bill drafting committee with unelected civil society
activists of the anti-corruption movement (2011–2) led by activist Anna Hazare. I then
discuss the attempted reform of the committee system and its working in 1993 and
consider further parliamentary reforms that are still needed. The article ends with my
concluding remarks.
Historical Backdrop
The historical antecedents of the Parliament must be found in the Government of India
Acts of 1909, 1919, and 1935 during the British Raj. But these British Indian democratic
experiments suffered from two basic limitations. First, the representative bodies they
brought into being were only partly elected (earlier entirely nominated) and on limited
franchise based on property and education. The gradually extended franchise had
reached 28.5 percent of the population in the Government of India Act, 1935. Second,
they lacked legislative autonomy from the executive powers of the Governor General
and Governors. The federal scheme under the 1935 Constitution Act could only be
partly implemented at the provincial level, and the central government continued to
work under the 1919 Constitution Act, except for the establishment of the newly
proposed Federal Court of India. This was due to the refusal of the princely Indian
states to join the proposed federal union. Indeed, Shiva Rao et al. have gone to the
extent of remarking:
The structure and composition of the legislative institutions provided in the pre-
vious enactments did not in these circumstances furnish any satisfactory basis on
which the legislatures of independent India under the new constitution could be
devised; and the Constituent Assembly had therefore to give thought to this matter
without any guidance from the past.1
The Motilal Nehru Committee, appointed by an all-party conference, in its Report

(1928) advocated a constitutional framework of parliamentary federalism in the White
Commonwealth mold with the Dominion status, with additional features like a cer-
tain degree of proportional representation and fundamental rights of the people. But it
failed to get unqualified support of either the Indian National Congress or the Muslim
League. The Lahore session of the former chaired by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1930 moved
beyond Dominion status with its purna swaraj (complete independence) resolution.
The latter also rejected it on several points from the perspective of Muslim minorities,
and proceeded subsequently to demand a separate homeland for Muslims at its Lahore
session in 1940.
354 India Review
The Constituent Assembly of independent India in designing the Parliament of the

Union government adopted the Commonwealth parliamentary federal model of the
Crown-in-Parliament but adapted it to the needs of republican India as the President-
in-Parliament. The bicameral Parliament consists of the House of the People (Lok
Sabha) representing the nation and the Council of States (Rajya Sabha) representing the
states of the federal union. Constituting the national first chamber and federal second
chamber was very complicated due to the knotty questions relating to the representa-
tion of the 500-odd princely states, who had become independent after the lapse of the
paramountcy of the British Crown over them under the Independence of India Act,
1947, enacted by the British Parliament to accomplish the transfer of power to the suc-
cessor states. But by the time the articles in the draft constitution came to be debated
in the Constituent Assembly, the process of integration of princely states to the Indian
Union had more or less been completed by a mix of diplomatic and military action.
The political map of the country had been considerably simplified. The former British
provinces and the Indian states were merged into newly created federating states of the
Indian Union.
Direct election of the members of the Lok Sabha in territorial electoral constituen-
cies under plurality electoral law was the universal view in the Constituent Assembly.
The hated British Indian practice of religion-based communal representation was
rejected in favor of composite representation of a territorial constituency or commu-
nity in general. The only departure from this pattern was the reservation of certain
seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in areas of their concentration on con-
siderations of their being parts of “socially and educationally backward classes.” The
number of reserved seats should bear the same relationship to the total seats for a state
as the proportion of the target communities. These reservations, originally made for ten
years, have been decennially extended for seventy years so far and are likely to continue
beyond the present limit. The by-and-large elite caste and community leaders belong-
ing to the upper classes in the Constituent Assembly apparently transcended narrow
social divisions and acted out a Burkean model of representation according to which a
representative is not a delegate but a “trustee” morally autonomous to deliberate and
act in a way that at times the short-term interests of one’s constituents are sacrificed for
the greater common good and national interests at stake in Parliament.
There was greater diversity of ideas regarding the composition of the Council of
States or Rajya Sabha. The draft Constitution proposed a Council of States compris-
ing two categories of members: (a) those indirectly elected by the elected members of
the state legislatures, and (b) those nominated by the President having special knowl-
edge or practical experience in literary, artistic, scientific, educational, administrative
fields or in agriculture, fisheries, engineering, and architecture.2 Prof. K.T. Shah (Bihar,
General) moved an amendment to the foregoing proposing instead that Parliament
may by law establish a Consultative Council of representatives of Agriculture (25),
Industry (15), Commerce (10), Mining, Forestry and Engineering (10), Public Utilities
(5), Social Services (5), and Economists (5) to advise the Parliament and the Council of
Ministers on all matters of policy affecting [these sectors/interests] and prepare or scru-
tinize proposals for legislation concerning any of these items (numbers in parentheses
stand for representatives).3 The amendment was negated. The text of the constitution
finally decided in favor of the bulk of the members indirectly elected to represent
states and 12 members to be nominated by the President “having special knowledge
or practical experience in respect of . . . Literature, science, art and social service.”
Those representing the states are elected by the elected members of the State Legislative
Assembly in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of
single transferable vote (Article 80 of the Indian Constitution).4
Bicameralism
The Indian parliamentary system, like such systems elsewhere, makes the Lok Sabha the
repository of the collective responsibility of the Council of Ministers as well as accords
it primacy in initiation of money bills and the final say in their passage through the
Parliament. Holding the keys to the parliamentary confidence in the government of the
day and the grant of money for public expenditure to the government, both crucial to
the government’s very survival, makes the Lok Sabha the prima donna on the political
stage. The Indian federal system is less generous to the Rajya Sabha in designing it as a
federal second chamber.
In the Constituent Assembly Loknath Misra (Orissa, General) had pleaded for equal
representation to the states in the Rajya Sabha. Prof. K. T. Shah (Bihar, General) argued
for its direct election, with each state allotted five seats.5 If accepted, these amend-
ments in the draft constitution would have made the Rajya Sabha a more powerful
and effective federal second chamber without undermining the parliamentary primacy
and integrity of the popularly elected national chamber, as the constitution of Australia
suggests.
The Rajya Sabha seems to have been originally designed by the makers of the consti-
tution with a certain measure of ambivalence with regard to the two axial principles of
government: parliamentarism and federalism. At first glance, it appears that the Rajya
Sabha is designed in a predominantly parliamentary mode: (1) It gives representation to
the state on the same principle of proportion of population rather than equal represen-
tation as federal units irrespective of their population size; (2) It is subordinate to the
Lok Sabha with regard to the parliamentary confidence rule and financial legislation;
and (3) Even through it has been given equal powers with the Lok Sabha in other leg-
islations, the provision for a joint session of the two chambers in cases of disagreement
would mean that the Lok Sabha with its larger membership would usually win, barring
complex coalitional configurations across the two houses. Most commentators seem to
have taken this line of interpretation; one has even gone to the extent of arguing that
instead of being cast as a defender of states’ rights, the Rajya Sabha instead can only
take away the rights of the states by resolving by a two-thirds majority of members
present and voting with valid quorum, of course, that (1) the union Parliament legislate
in national interest on a subject in the State List, and (2) the union government create
a new All-India Service, a matter of vital concern to the states.6 Even W.H. Morris-
Jones in his classic study of the Indian Parliament fails to find any appreciable federal
relevance for the Rajya Sabha:
The Upper House is a Council of States of the Union and its members are elected
by the State Assemblies. This, however, does not seem to have made the floor of the
356 India Review
Council a battle-ground between Centre and States; a defence of “states-rights,” an

expression of regional demands, is just as likely to be heard in the other house.7
Even as a parliamentary second chamber, Morris-Jones did not find the Rajya Sabha
greatly relevant or useful: similar in members’ socio-economic and political career back-
grounds as well as in rules of procedure, the Rajya Sabha “provided neither for technical
revision nor for a wider and more leisurely debate.”8 The only saving grace for the
Rajya Sabha as a second chamber that Morris-Jones found were two: (1) The govern-
ment had started using it as the site for first initiation of bills in conjunction with the
Lok Sabha to lessen the burden of the primary initiation in the Lok Sabha; and (2) the
Rajya Sabha was “beginning to try its wings as a forum for grand and soaring debates.”9
(Though the two houses have similar procedures, the debate in the Rajya Sabha is less
restrictive time-wise on account of its smaller size).
The Rajya Sabha today does not function in a radically different way. However, the
regionalization of the party system in the 1980s at the state level and the dissociation
of the national party system from the state party systems since 1989 have invested the
Rajya Sabha with greater potentiality as a federal second chamber. Indeed, arguably
even the modestly designed Rajya Sabha in the constitution can have a greater federal
relevance than the commentators have generally attributed to it. This is for the fol-
lowing reasons. First, Rajya Sabha has not only equal powers with the Lok Sabha in
the federally important matter of constitutional amendments but also a veto power by
virtue of a silence in the constitution. The provision for a joint session of the two houses
in the case of a disagreement on a legislative bill is missing in the case of a constitutional
amendment bill. Second, the joint sitting of the two houses on a bill may shape up in
a more complex way in terms of coalitions among parties in the Parliament as a whole,
although it has not happened thus far. Third, the Rajya Sabha is also not subject to the
constraints of a joint session with the Lok Sabha while approving a proclamation of
national, state, and financial emergencies under Articles 352, 356, and 360 of the con-
stitution, and in the cases of impeachment of the President and removal of a Supreme
Court or High Court judge under Articles 61, 124, and 217 of the constitution, respec-
tively. Fourth, the Rajya Sabha can block the intentions of a federal government to legis-
late in a certain contingency on a State List subject and to create a new All-India Service.
Thus, it would appear that the essential parliamentary interpretation, as against fed-
eral interpretation, of the powers of the Rajya Sabha was a by-product of the one-party
dominant system in the early decades of the Indian republic. The regionalization of the
multi-party system and the onset of federal coalition governments since the early 1990s
have enormously enhanced the political maneuverability of the Rajya Sabha. Since the
1989 parliamentary elections the coalitional majority of the government in the Lok
Sabha has never been matched by a coalitional majority in the Rajya Sabha. Both the
government and the opposition find it necessary to fabricate a consensus for passage of
any law and constitutional amendment through the Parliament. Without such a con-
sensus, coalition governments are paralyzed by a legislative logjam. The joint session
of the two houses to overcome it is of an exceptional nature and cannot be obviously
taken recourse to in every case without raising political howls as well as presidential
and judicial eyebrows. In the six and a half decades since the commencement of the
constitution, there have been only three joint sittings. The first in 1961was convened
by the Jawaharlal Nehru Congress government which enjoyed an absolute majority
in both the houses but desisted from issuing party whips on the socially contentious
dowry prohibition bill, 1959. The two houses finally agreed with the bill and it became
an Act. The second joint session was convened by the Morarji Desai Janata Party gov-
ernment in 1978 to overcome the opposition in the Rajya Sabha to the banking service
commission (repeal) bill, 1977. The third joint sitting was called by the Bharatiya Janata
Party-led National Democratic Alliance government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee
in 2002 after the prevention of terrorism bill was passed by the Lok Sabha by261 votes
to 137 but subsequently defeated in the Rajya Sabha by 113 votes to 98. In the joint
session it was passed by 425 votes to 294, with 58 MPs either absent or abstaining. In all
the three cases, the Lok Sabha prevailed over the Rajya Sabha.
As the joint session cannot be a regular feature of the legislative process, the gov-
ernment of the day must move by consensus with the opposition and between the
two houses. This is evident by what Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee (Congress-
led United Progressive Alliance government) told a persistent media questioner in
February 2010 about lack of progress on a number of legislative intentions of the
government such as insurance, companies, banking, and pension bills:
The problem is that we did not have a numerical majority in both houses of par-
liament without the support of the Left and other allied parties. . . . [T]hough we
are having a number but it is not adequate on our own to get the required magic
number of 272 because that is a simple majority [in Lok Sabha]. In the Rajya Sabha,
we don’t have even the combination. We are a little short of that but we are having
in the Lok Sabha [a majority] with the combination, with the coalition.10
When the questioner asked why the government was not moving on issues on which
the two major parties in government and opposition (Congress and BJP) are on the
same page, say, 49 percent foreign direct investment (FDI) in the insurance sector,
Mukherjee said he was not sure about whether the main opposition would cooperate.
Additionally, coalition partners in the UPA did not agree on all issues and feel insecure
if the Congress party joined hands with the main opposition party disregarding the
sensitivities of its coalition partners. “It’s not an economic issue. It is basically a polit-
ical management in a coalition government,” Mukherjee added.11 Even the BJP/NDA
government led by Narendra Modi elected in May 2014 with an absolute single party
majority (282 out of 543) as well as a more formidable coalitional majority (335/543) in
the Lok Sabha is not out of the woods as far as its position in the federal second cham-
ber is concerned. The BJP alone has only 46 members in the 250-member Rajya Sabha;
even with the members of coalescing parties in the NDA added, its tally goes up to
only 64. This is far below the majority mark of 124. As the Rajya Sabha reflects the
party systems in the states, this situation will change, even if the winning spree of
BJP/NDA in Haryana and Maharashtra as of October 2014 continues in the forthcom-
ing state Assembly elections in the near-term time ahead, only gradually in the next
two years or so. Thus Prime Minister Modi, despite winning a single party majority
after 30 long years since 1984, is haunted by compulsions of coalition government in
358 India Review
the federal second chamber. Nevertheless, the Modi Government has gone on record
that it intends to use the constitutional provision of joint sessions as much as necessary
to get over bicameral deadlocks.
A 2003 amendment to the Representation of the People Act (1951) changing one
of the qualifications of a Rajya Sabha member (domiciliary requirement or territorial
nexus with the state one represents) has struck a severe blow to the federal charac-
ter of this house. Strangely, even the Supreme Court has validated this amendment in
Kuldip Nayar v. Union of India (2006), selectively citing the opinion in the Constituent
Assembly of India in the nationalist constituent moment and tilting in favor of quasi-
federalism in the current moment and mood of federal fervor and pressures.12 The
Justice M.M. Punchhi Commission on Centre-State Relations in its Report submitted
in March 2010 aptly recommends:
The Supreme Court’s reasoning to reject the status of the Upper House as the
representatives of the states, it is respectfully submitted, is faulty and warrants
reconsideration. Equally important is the need for the Court to review its reluc-
tance to accept the need for a territorial link for the election to the Council of
States. The Constituent Assembly Debates do provide support to the view that the
Council of States was intended to give a say to the Units in the affairs of the Center.
There was evidence to show that the equal representation formula was substituted
by the “weighted proportional representation” under the Fourth Schedule only to
avoid extreme solutions to a difficult situation at the time of independence.13
Indeed, this commission goes for the first time beyond the official discourse on the
larger question of the representation in and the role of the Rajya Sabha as contained
in the Constituent Assembly Debates, the text of the Constitution, and the Report
of the Justice R. S. Sarkaria Commission on Center-State Relations.14 In the interest
of restoring federal balance of political forces in the Parliament, where smaller states
are heavily outnumbered in their representation in the Lok Sabha as well as the Rajya
Sabha, the Punchhi Commission recommends equal representation to states qua states
irrespective of their demography and geography.15 The Commission goes on to suggest:
Whenever Central policies are formulated in relation to one or more states, it is

only proper that Committees of Rajya Sabha involving representatives of con-
cerned States are allowed to discuss and come up with alternative courses of action
acceptable to the States and the Union. Thus compensating the mineral rich States
or the Hill States can well be negotiated in the Rajya Sabha Committee. Similarly,
States adversely affected by the Centre entering into treaties or agreements with
other countries can get appropriate remedies if the forum of the Rajya Sabha is
utilized for the purpose.16
These reforms would bring about an element of “legislative federalism” in intergov-

ernmental affairs where the “executive federalism” via Inter-State Council/National
Development Council and PM-CMs/ministerial/secretarial conferences in formal or
informal forums has been the modal norm.
The New Committee System

It is a truism that such a huge representative body as the Indian Parliament cannot
function minutely and efficiently without committees. Even the cabinet is an execu-
tive committee of the Parliament, but, except for a “national government” that may be
formed in a crisis situation like a war, it divides the national as well as the federal cham-
bers of Parliament between the government and the opposition. Parliamentary com-
mittees, on the other hand, are all-party bodies bridging the government-opposition
demarcation, with representation to parties proportioned to their numbers in the
houses. The number of committees is variable, depending on exigencies of the time,
especially in relation to ad hoc committees in each house and ad hoc joint parliamentary
committees (JPCs) formed to deal with specific emergent issues. Recent Parliaments
typically have had about 60 committees – some exclusive to each house and some
bicameral in membership. No minister can be a member of a parliamentary commit-
tee, although one may be called to appear before it, especially a JPC inquiring into
some irregularity, in exceptional situations for evidence or questioning.
Compared to the US congressional committees, parliamentary committees in the
British or Commonwealth parliamentary tradition are a rather a low-key affair and
function outside the glare of electronic mass media. In addition to working minutely
on legislative and constitutional amendment bills, the working of the government to
increase parliamentary efficiency, committees, among other devices is also a signif-
icant mechanism of legislative control of the executive. The more significant parts
of regular parliamentary committee work are dealt with by financial committees
(e.g., Public Accounts Committee, Estimates Committee) and the newer government
department-related select committees (DRSCs) of Parliament.
Since 1969, the tradition of bicameral consultative committees of Members of
Parliament, which are attached to the various ministries and convened by the minister
concerned, has developed. The maximum membership of 40 in these committees is left
to the volition of members and political parties concerned. No formal decision is min-
uted but unanimous informal opinions may and have been accepted by the government.
However, neither the members nor the ministers are expected to mention on the floor
of the Parliament whatever may have transpired in these consultative committees.17
Ministry-based specialized standing committees for detailed scrutiny of expendi-
ture, administration, and policy by Parliament is probably the most important reform
in parliamentary government in the last quarter of the twentieth century. In 1979 the
British House of Commons moved in this direction by formally establishing 14 depart-
mentally related select committees to which a fifteenth, the Liaison Committee,
consisting of chairmen of other select committees, was added in 1980. The commit-
tee was empowered to send for persons and governmental records, enlist services of
specialists, and appoint subcommittees in respect of three departments (home affairs,
treasury, and foreign affairs). The developments have been viewed positively by par-
ticipants as well as by the Procedure Committee’s formal inquiry ten years after the
establishment of the new committees. The reform has also been welcomed by the media
and pressure groups. The journalists are much better informed regarding the parlia-
mentary process than they were before these reforms. The pressure groups generally
360 India Review
see themselves “as forming a triangle of influence, the other two corners of which are
occupied by departmentally-related Select Committees and the media.”18
Following the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Financial
Management and Accountability chaired by Allen Lambert, the Canadian Parliament
also streamlined its committee system in 1989. The reformed departmentally-related
standing committees then introduced are empowered to review and report on statute
laws, programs and policy implementation, expenditure plans and their implementa-
tion, and performance of the departments falling within the purview of the parliamen-
tary committees.19
The Indian Parliament made a beginning with three select subject committees—one
each on agriculture, science and technology, and environment and forests – in 1989.20
Encouraged by the experiment, the Rules Committee in its Third Report to the Lok
Sabha in March 1993 recommended the establishment of 17 standing or select com-
mittees of Parliament for the various ministries/departments. The committees were
formally inaugurated on March 31, 1993.21 Established under Rule 331 C, the mem-
bers of the committees are nominated by the Rajya Sabha Chairman and Lok Sabha
Speaker and their chairmen are appointed by the Speaker. Committee membership is
for a year.22 While it allows for a larger number of MPs to gain experience of committee
work, the turnover is too quick to allow deeper interest and specialization.
Each of these committees consists of 45 members (30 from Lok Sabha and 15 from
Rajya Sabha). Party representation in committees broadly reflects their parliamentary
strength. The expectation of the Rules Committee is that consensus culture would
prevail in the committee, but in case a member wants, “he can be allowed to submit
a dissenting note or minutes of dissent.”23 Department related standing committees
concern themselves with analysis and review of policies, demands for grants, and
action taken reports. Among these committees, Finance tabled the maximum num-
ber of reports in the 15th Lok Sabha (until October 2011), followed by Agriculture,
Information Technology, and Human Resource Development. Among the three finan-
cial committees, the Public Accounts Committee submitted 39 reports, whereas the
Estimates Committee and the Public Undertakings Committee tabled 11 reports each.
In terms of attendance of members the Petroleum Committee registered 61 percent,
Health Committee 52 percent, Finance Committee and Rural Development Committee
50 percent each, and Human Development Resource Committee 48 percent. These
were among the better-attended committees.24
In Subhash Kashyap’s assessment, “the concept of departmentally related standing
select committees provide to parliament sharper and more effective surveillance tools,
restore the balance between parliament’s legislative and deliberative functions and its
role as a representative body, and above all, save valuable parliamentary time to the
mutual advantage of both parliament and government.”25
A number of MPs. cutting across party lines, in a Social Watch Seminar in New
Delhi, November 2009, attended by me testified to the general norm of consen-
sus approach in the committees. However, the experience of the Public Accounts
Committee inquiring into the 2-G Telecom Spectrum Scam under the Congress-led
United Progressive Alliance Government in 2011–12 was extremely fractious and
partisan.
The Justice M. N. Venkatachaliah National Commission to Review the Working

of the Constitution in its Report submitted in 2002 found some shortcomings in
the working of the departmental parliamentary committees, such as for example,
their cumbersome size, absenteeism, lack of specialism and focused work etc.26 The
most important reform that they recommended was that, besides the existing stand-
ing committees, three new nodal committees should be set up, one each on National
Economy (subsuming the existing committees on Estimates, and Public Undertakings),
Constitutional Amendments, and Legislation (subsuming the existing committee on
subordinate legislation). These are justified in terms of the fact that legislation is
Parliament’s primary responsibility; executive power of the Union is co-extensive with
legislative power but the constituent power is exclusively parliamentary domain; and
major macroeconomic issues of fiscal, monetary, financial, industrial, and trade poli-
cies need to be considered in an integrated manner. With these committees in place, the
Parliament would have an alternative perspective to consider instead of relying solely
on the point of view of the executive.27 These recommendations have not yet been
implemented.
Decline of Parliament
The decline of Parliament has been a recurrent lament all over the democratic world.
In the case of the so-called Mother of Parliaments in the United Kingdom, the argu-
ment appeared in the literature in the early twentieth century, soon after the heyday of
parliamentary government was followed by disenchantment and the rise of cabinet gov-
ernment.28 The growth of the party system, cabinet government, “presidentialization”
of the office of the Prime Minister (in the American sense) and the enormous expan-
sion of the functions and area of government after the Great Economic Depression and
World War II were the major factors responsible for this development. Even without
the growth of a strong party system in the West European sense in India, the other
foregoing factors passed into history in the years after the “Nehru-Patel duumvirate”
and prompted the growth of executive dominance under Nehru and neo-patrimonial
Prime Ministerial cabinet under Indira Gandhi, and to a lesser extent under Rajiv
Gandhi.
Although growth of the party system was the functional precondition for gov-
ernmental stability, it often reduces the government-opposition encounter to shad-
owboxing. Instruments of parliamentary control of the executive are blunted by the
mechanism of party whip and recurrent disruptions of parliamentary proceedings
crowding out standard institutional mechanisms of executive accountability and trans-
parency. For example, the practice of parliamentary questions has lost much of its
significance and sheen. In principle and under the rules every sitting/attending MP
is entitled to raise questions about the working of a ministry or department for the
ministers concerned to reply and explain. Questions, so-called unstarred ones, get writ-
ten replies, while the starred ones are replied to orally and MPs get opportunity to
raise supplementary queries. However, Parliament suffers from serious practical and
structural limitations in this regard. In the 15th Lok Sabha (2009–14) only 648 or
10 per cent of listed questions were orally answered on account of 40 percent of
362 India Review
scheduled time being wasted by interruptions by the opposition. Unlike its British
counterpart, the Indian Parliament does not allow time for Prime Minister’s ques-
tion hour every Wednesday for inter-departmental affairs. In addition to questions,
parliamentary debates are also a powerful instrument of governmental accountability.
In recent years, unending disruptions and unbending postures have marked debates on
rising prices of essential goods, allowing foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail
trade and internal security. In most of these debates, voting is not even recorded under
the existing rules, denying the electors the opportunity to keep track of how their rep-
resentatives voted on various issues of their concern and hold them accountable to the
constituents.29
Parliament is first and foremost the most authoritative mechanism of law making
and deliberative democracy. The decline of the Indian parliament is becoming evident
in the shortening sessions and decrease in time spent on scrutinizing legislative and bud-
getary bills, and the tendency on the part of the executive to pass bills by ordinances.
There has been a sharp reduction in the number of sittings from the highs of above a
hundred for both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha until 1974 to the lows of two
digit figures for both the houses thereafter, barring 1978, 1985, 1987, and 1988 for the
Lok Sabha. The exceptional spurts in Lok Sabha sittings in 1978 coincided with the for-
mation of the first non-Congress Union government by the post-Jayaprakash Narayan
mass movement, post-Emergency political party called the Janata Party which merged
all major non-Congress and non-communist parties and was led by Morarji Desai. The
years of 1985–88 were heady years when the youthful scion of the Nehru dynasty, Rajiv
Gandhi, was in the saddle having succeeded his mother as Prime Minister following her
assassination. 1985 was also the centenary year of the Indian National Congress, the
oldest political party in the Afro-Asian world. The data show erratic ups and downs
in these intervening years for one house, but the general direction of change is one
of sharp decline for both. The latest figures available show that in the year 2012 the
Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha had only 74 sittings each. This parity in sittings may
also be taken as an indicator of the growing influence of the Rajya Sabha in the fed-
eral phase starting with the 1989 parliamentary elections marked by regionalization
of the party system and the advent of federal coalition governments (see Table and
Figure 1).
A look at the number of bills (finance and appropriation bills included) also tell a
similar story of decline in parliamentary activity on this vital functional front. Here
the sharp decline is evident from the high of 82 in 1952 to the low of 36 in 2011 (see
Table 2).
The record of the precious time lost by the Lok Sabha is equally appalling. This is
evident from the figure of the actual hours of sitting as a percentage of available hours
for the Lok Sabha between 1985 and 2011 (see Table 3).
The frequency of entire sessions being washed away by Opposition obstructionism
has occasionally been witnessed, with major national and regional parties professing
that this is part of parliamentary strategy when the government is utterly insensitive to
the opposition demands. Although the situation with regard to legislation by ordinance
is not as bad at the national level as in some states where ordinance raj has incurred
a good deal of stricture by the Supreme Court (for example, Supreme Court, D.C.
TABLE 1
NO. OF SITTINGS OF LOK SABHA AND RAJYA SABHA 1952–2012
Year Lok Sabha Rajya Sabha Year Lok Sabha Rajya Sabha
1952 103 60 1983 93 77

1953 137 100 1984 77 63
1954 137 103 1985 109 89
1955 139 111 1986 98 86
1956 151 113 1987 102 89
1957 104 78 1988 102 89
1958 125 91 1989 83 71
1959 123 87 1990 81 66
1960 121 87 1991 90 82
1961 102 75 1992 98 90
1962 116 91 1993 89 79
1963 122 100 1994 77 75
1964 122 97 1995 78 77
1965 113 96 1996 70 64
1966 119 109 1997 65 68
1967 110 91 1998 64 59
1968 120 103 1999 51 48
1969 120 102 2000 85 85
1970 119 107 2001 81 81
1971 102 89 2002 84 82
1972 111 99 2003 74 74
1973 120 105 2004 48 46
1974 119 109 2005 85 85
1975 63 58 2006 77 77
1976 98 84 2007 66 65
1977 86 70 2008 46 46
1978 115 97 2009 64 63
1979 66 54 2010 81 81
1980 96 90 2011 73 73
1981 105 89 2012 74 74
1982 92 82
Source: PRS Legislative Research, Center for Policy Research, New Delhi.
Wadhva v. State Bihar),30 yet the Government of India has taken recourse to issuing
ordinances where Parliament could have been feasibly used for the purpose under the
given circumstances.
Since the late 1980s, the decline of Parliament has further continued due to unprece-
dented increase in corruption and criminalization of political processes.31 In the
fifteenth Lok Sabha elected in 2009, 30 percent of MPs had criminal cases pending
against them in courts. Among the two main national parties – the Indian National
Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – the percentage of tainted mem-
bers stood at 21 percent and 38 percent, respectively. The relevant data for other parties
were as follows: Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPI-M) 19 percent, Bahujan
Samaj Party (BSP) 29 percent, Janata Dal-United (JD-U) 40 percent, Biju Janata Dal
(BJD) 29 percent, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagan (AIADMK) 44 per-
cent, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) 22 percent, and so forth. The situation got
worse in the 16th Lok Sabha elected in 2014, with MPs with criminal charges going up
to 34 percent from 30 percent in previous Lok Sabha. However, within the two major
national parties, the tally of such law-makers went down in INC from 21 to 18 percent
and in BJP form 38 to 35 percent.32
364 India Review
FIGURE 1
NO. OF SITTINGS PER YEAR 1995–2010.
Source: PRS Legislative Research, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
Corruption and criminalization of politics have made parliamentary and legislative

elections an affair of the rich and of musclemen, by and large. In the 15th Lok Sabha,
58 percent of MPs are crorepatis (those with ten million rupees in assets). In the two
main national parties the percentage of such members is as high as 71 in the INC and
51 in the BJP, respectively. In several regional or nominally national parties the per-
centages are also quite high or higher: AIADMK 56, BSP 62, DMK 72, Nationalist
Congress Party 78, CPI-M 19, JD-U 40, Jammu & Kashmir National Conference 67,
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) 50, BJD 42, and so forth. In the Lok Sabha elections in
2014, the percentages of crorepati MPs rose from 51 to 84 in BJP and from 71 to 80 in
the Congress.33
The bribing of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) to win a confidence vote
in the Lok Sabha in the mid-1990s by the P. V. Narasimha Rao Congress minority
Government brought out the depths to which parliamentary morality had descended.34
Instances of bribes for raising questions in Parliament, selling of ministerial and parlia-
mentarians’ discretion in the allocation of certain public services, and economic and
political scams in general, have multiplied since the 1990s. Among dozens of major
scams indulged in by the political and administrative classes, the two that are unsur-
passed in financial scale, as well as the erosion of the legitimacy of the state, relate to
the allocations of telecom spectrum and coal mining concessions to private companies
by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government and its predecessor, the
BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government. Thanks to the Comptroller and
Auditor General’s report to the Parliament and the Supreme Court’s prompt action,
they became public and prosecutionable.
The leak of the taped conversations of lobbyist Nira Radia, who was working first
for the Tata group and later for industrialist Mukesh Ambani, has revealed how the cor-
porate sector has begun to influence the news and views of the supposedly free media
and even the allocation of ministerial portfolios in the federal coalition governments
headed by the national parties.35
TABLE 2
NUMBER OF BILLS PASSED 1952–2011 FINANCE AND APPROPRIATION BILLS INCLUDED
Number of Number of
Year Bills Passed Year Bills Passed
1952 82 1982 73
1953 58 1983 49
1954 54 1984 73
1955 60 1985 92
1956 106 1986 71
1957 68 1987 61
1958 59 1988 71
1959 63 1989 38
1960 67 1990 30
1961 63 1991 63
1962 68 1992 44
1963 58 1993 75
1964 56 1994 61
1965 51 1995 45
1966 57 1996 36
1967 38 1997 35
1968 67 1998 40
1969 58 1999 39
1970 53 2000 63
1971 87 2001 61
1972 82 2002 86
1973 70 2003 56
1974 68 2004 18
1975 57 2005 56
1976 118 2006 65
1977 48 2007 46
1978 50 2008 47
1979 32 2009 41
1980 72 2010 43
1981 62 2011 36
Parliament’s control over public expenditure is as important as its role in law mak-
ing and governmental accountability. The constitution gives the Parliament primacy in
public finance. Government’s power to raise revenue by levying taxes cannot be put
in operation unless the Parliament makes a law to this effect. Any expenditure from
the Consolidated Fund of India needs prior sanction from the Lok Sabha, the Rajya
Sabha playing only an advisory role in the matter. Demands for grants for each min-
istry are presented in the form of detailed expenditure plans for parliamentary (mainly
Lok Sabha’s) approval. This is supposed to be done after its referral to and scrutiny by
the parliamentary standing committee overseeing the ministry concerned. The report
of the committee is debated in the Lok Sabha and only opposition parties may move
cut motions. By convention, cut motions on money bills are treated as equivalent to
the confidence vote, implying that if they are carried, the government must resign. Nor
would the government’s spending power be in order without audit by the constitu-
tionally autonomous authority, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (Articles
148–151), submission of his reports to the Parliament and their scrutiny by the Public
Accounts Committee and its report to the Lok Sabha for its discursive approval. These
are powerful weapons in the parliamentary armory. But the ultimate power of voting
366 India Review
TABLE 3
TIME LOST—LOK SABHA 1985–2011
Actual hours of sitting as a Actual hours of sitting as a

Session Year percentage of available hours Session Year percentage of available hours
1 1985 95% 4 1999 95%

2 1985 118% 1 1999 93%
3 1985 106% 2 1999 108%
4 1985 111% 3 2000 92%
5 1986 125% 4 2000 110%
6 1986 109% 5 2000 75%
7 1986 113% 6 2001 59% Demand for JPC on Stock
Market Scam
8-Part I 1987 106% 7 2001 100%
8-Part II 1987 106% Demand for JPC on Bofors 8 2001 59%
9 1987 105% 9 2002 92%
10 1988 108% 10 2002 71%
11 1988 119% 11 2002 116%
12 1988 108% 12 2003 108%
13 1989 109% 13 2003 90% Demand for JPC on Pesticide
Residues and Safety Standards for
Soft Drinks, Fruit Juices and other
Beverages
14-Part I 1989 105% 14-Part I 2003 99%
1 1989 121% 1 2004 33%
2 1990 122% 2 2004 64%
3-Part I 1990 112% 3 2004 101%
6 1990 114% 4 2005 93%
7 1991 76% 5 2005 110%
1 1991 118% 6 2005 86%
2 1991 107% 7 2006 93%
3 1992 105% 8 2006 94%
4 1992 88% Demand for JPC on 9 2006 98%
Irregularities in Securities and
Banking Transactions
5 1992 94% 10 2007 66%
7 1993 113% 11 2007 63%
8 1993 79% 12 2007 89%
9 1994 108% 13 2008 97%
11 1994 89% 14 2008 89%
12 1994 67% 15 2009 100%
13 1995 97% 1 2009 67%
14 1995 118% 2 2009 104%
15 1995 36% 3 2009 83%
16 1996 81% 4 2010 72%
4 1997 117% 5 2010 87%
5 1997 134% 6 2010 6% Demand for JPC on 2G
1 1998 118% 7 2011 85%
2 1998 124% 8 2011 67%
3 1998 90% 9 2011 59%
Note: According to the rules of procedure of the Lok Sabha, it is normally scheduled to meet from 11 AM to 6 PM. The
house is 100% productive with respect to the time when it meets from 11 AM to 6 PM. When it sits beyond 6 PM, which
it often does, the productivity exceeds the normally designated hours in the rules of procedure, and exceeds 100%. This
explanatory note applies to Figure 3 as well.
out an incumbent government cannot be selectively used in dislodging it; the incumbent
opposition goes out together to seek a dreadfully expensive reelection. Hence, a mutu-
ally self-serving vested interest of the government and the opposition may and does
FIGURE 2
NO. OF BILLS PASSED PER YEAR 1952–2010.
Source: PRS Legislative Research, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
FIGURE 3
ACTUAL HOURS OF SITTING AS A PERCENTAGE OF AVAILABLE HOURS 1985–2011.
Source: PRS Legislative Research, Center for Policy Research, New Delhi. Note: See explanatory note to
Table 3 that is applicable to this Figure as well. Copyright: Courtesy Dr M. R. Madhwan, Director: PRS Legislative
Research, supplied by email.
develop to the detriment of public interest and the larger common good. Moreover, the
reference of the demands for grants to the standing committee is not mandatory. This
process was, for example, bypassed in 2009 and 2012. Furthermore, not all demands
for grants are actually discussed by the Lok Sabha. Sometimes, there is hardly any time
for Parliament to discuss the matter. In 2010, the standing committee on the Ministry of
External Affairs submitted its report to the Lok Sabha at 12 Noon on April 20, followed
by discussion in the house at 2 PM! The figure of 135 hours of discussion devoted to
budgets in the first three Lok Sabhas on an average each year has shrunk to 35 hours
each year in the last three Lok Sabhas before the general elections of 2014.36
A number of developments have taken place in the last three decades that have
cumulatively contributed to Parliament’s precipitous decline and crisis in its function-
ing in absolute as well as relative terms vis-à-vis other organs of government as also the
civil society and economy. Internally, the Tenth Schedule comprising the Anti-defection
368 India Review
Act was added to the constitution by the 52nd Amendment (1985), which bound MPs
affiliated with political parties (which is the norm in both houses) to obey party whips
on all voting motions or else be expelled not only from the parties concerned but also
from the membership of Parliament. Expulsion from Parliament can be avoided only in
case of the merger of a party with another party formed in Parliament by not less than
two-thirds of the members of the original party. Even voluntary individual renunciation
of membership of the original party on whose ticket one was elected is not permissible.
The remedy to the rampant floor crossing by members after the 1967 general election,
first in state legislatures and subsequently in the more august Parliament of India in the
post-Nehru era for unscrupulous monetary and/or political office gains, has proved to
be a case of double jeopardy, as the price for group defection has risen astronomically
without in fact curbing the frequency of dishonorable deeds of “Honorable Members”
under the cloak of parliamentary privileges and immunities. This ill-conceived con-
stitutional amendment robs the individual MPs of their moral agency and capability
as lawmakers. It also undermines MPs’ representative accountability to their electors.
Moreover, it countenances accumulation of authoritarian powers in the hands of the
unelected bosses of political parties, which are mostly devoid of regular and even per-
functory intra-party elections and democratic procedures of decision making. With a
few exceptions, practically all national as well as regional parties have come to be char-
acterized by personalized power and familial or dynastic recruitment and succession
as legislators, with ministers doubling as parties’ organizational bosses. A study of the
36 political parties that have at least one seat in the Lok Sabha elected in 2014 reveals
that as many as 23, or 64 percent of all political parties, are family-based (defined as
having MPs who were preceded or followed by family members in politics).37
The Anti-defection law was brought in by the Rajiv Gandhi Congress govern-
ment after its landslide electoral victory in 1984, surpassing the poll performance of
the party even under Nehru and Indira Gandhi in the wake of the “sympathy wave”
for the orphaned Rajiv Gandhi in public reaction to the rise of terrorism in Punjab
and Indira Gandhi’s assassination by two of her Sikh security guards at the Prime
Minister’s House as revenge for her ordering the Army to flush out the Khalistan ter-
rorists ensconced in the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The reason given for justifying the
52nd constitutional amendment was that it would ensure governmental stability and
insulate political parties from the scourge of unprincipled defections. The experience
since then has, however, proved both these rationales as patently spurious in fact.
The only way Indian political parties today can be reformed and institutionalized is
by exposing them to intra-party democracy and federal reconstruction. The advent of
federal coalition and minority governments since 1989 was hoped to herald an era of
greater democratic and federal consensual governance. Tendencies toward these values
and virtues were soon aborted by rampant governmental instability in the first decade
after 1989 when the life of six governments in less than ten years averaged short of two
years, the shortest duration being 13 days! In the subsequent decade and a half between
1999 and 2014, the problem of governmental instability was somehow contained in
the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and Congress-led
United Progressive Alliance (UPA) governments, but the process of government and
governance came to be alarmingly marked, especially during the UPA-II (2009-2014),
by endemic corruption (not sparing even judicial appointments in higher courts).
The atrophy of the role of parliamentarians in the tradition of the Burkean theory of
representation, which treats parliamentarians as trustees of the nation and repositories
of the institutional identity of the Parliament and public interest, is also patently evi-
dent in India. It is reflected, for example, in the growing extinction of private members’
bills vis-à-vis government bills. In practice, only the latter are passed into law. Only
14 private members’ bills have been passed in India’s parliamentary history, the last
one in 1970. Contrast this with the British Parliament, which passed 17 private mem-
bers’ bills in the three years since the elections of 2010. A large number of bills are not
debated at all; most are passed by voice vote, and without recording how individual
MPs voted. This dilutes transparency and accountability of the representatives to the
electors. Recording of votes must therefore be made mandatory.38
Within the structure of government, Parliament has also suffered encroachment on
its turf by the executive and the judiciary in the post-Nehru era. Blatant executive
aggrandizement reached its peak during Indira Gandhi’s rule in the turbulent 1970s,
especially during the Emergency period of 1975–77, to deal with extra-parliamentary
mass movements in protest against corruption and authoritarianism in Congress gov-
ernments at the Centre and in the states. The movement was initiated in Gujarat by
Morarji Desai and it subsequently spread to Bihar and finally across North India and
down to Karnataka under the leadership of the Socialist-turned-Gandhian Jayaprakash
Narayan. However, the phenomenon of the executive elbowing out Parliament from its
legitimate law-making role was visible even under Nehru and from the post-Emergency
restoration of democracy to the present. This is amply illustrated by the narrative
of the misuse of executive law-making by ordinance. This is a colonial legacy that
has survived in India from the Government of India Act, 1935, under which the
Governor General of India and Governors of provinces could promulgate ordinances
even during the currency of the sessions of the Central and provincial legislatures. The
Constituent Assembly modified it and retained it as an emergency executive law mak-
ing device “to meet an emergent situation” when the Parliament or state legislatures
were not in session. The saner voices of Pandit Hriday Nath Kunzru and Hari Vishnu
Kamath to abolish or further dilute it were not accepted. None of the parliamentary
federations in the British Commonwealth political tradition like Canada (1867) and
Australia (1901) have had this undemocratic and un-federal feature. The colonial as
well as postcolonial rulers have been equally prone to misuse it. In the first year after
the commencement of the constitution, the Nehru-led Congress majority government
issued 32 ordinances. Until 2013, 600 ordinances have been promulgated: 61 during
Indira Gandhi’s personal Emergency, 34 in 1993 (largest in a single year) under the
P. V. Narasimha Rao-led Congress minority government, and 83 between 1996 and
1998 under unstable coalition governments. The practice of executive law-making is
clearly out of step with the intents and purposes of the makers of the constitution.
Speakers such as G. V. Mavalankar, G. S. Dhillon, and some MPs had disapproved
of setting bad precedents by inexplicable executive law-making. This view has also
received judicial endorsement in case law engendered by the Supreme Court in R. K.
Garg v. Union of India (1981) and D. C. Wadhwa v. State of Bihar (1987). Yet, recourse
to this route to law making continues in practice as evidenced by the Criminal Law
(Amendment) ordinance in the wake of the Nirbhaya rape case in the winter of 2012 and
370 India Review
the National Food Security ordinance promulgatedon July 5, 2013, by the Congress-
led UPA-II. The latter instance suffered from triple infirmities: (a) “there was a bill
already pending in parliament since 2011,” (b) “parliamentary discussion on the bill
began during the budget session,” and (c) “parliament is slated to reconvene within a
few weeks.” None of the constitutional stipulations of urgency were valid, except that
“the gain anticipated in the 2014 elections through such populist measures is the more
likely reason.”39
Parliament has also lost considerable ground to the judiciary over the decades, some
probably irrecoverably and some more easily liable to be reclaimed. The former is
paradigmatically illustrated by the judicial doctrine of “basic structure” or “essential
features’” of the constitution propounded by the Supreme Court in Keshavananda
Bharati v. State of Kerala (1973) and consolidated in a series of landmark judgments
recently revisited by I. R. Koelho v. State of Tamil Nadu (2007). Under this emer-
gent constitutional law the exclusive power of amending the constitution, which was
assigned in the text of the constitution to Parliament alone or in some federal con-
cerns to the aggregated Union and state legislatures, has come to be shared with the
constitutional courts by virtue the discursively invented power of judicial review of
amendments on the touchstone of the unamendability of the basic structure of the
constitution. The latter is exemplified by judicial overreach in areas of parliamen-
tary apathy and inactivity in legislating to fill a legal vacuum that is shown to be in
public interest or based on principles of natural justice, for example, judicial law mak-
ing to deal with sexual harassment of women in the work place (Vishakha v. State
of Rajasthan, 1997), and the some of the aforementioned instances of judicial action
aimed at free and fair elections and disqualification of corrupt legislators. The power
of judicial review has also entered into the supposedly exclusive domains of legisla-
tive procedures, Speakers’ or presiding officers’ rulings under the anti-defection law,
and parliamentary privileges and immunities, although judicial overreach in matters
of privileges is more circumspect but sometimes leading to bizarre and contradictory
conclusions.40
The mass media or the “fourth estate” have emerged as an alternate deliberative site
to Parliaments as a forum of public debate in democracies the world over in varying
degrees of sophistication and effectiveness. From independence to the 1980s, the elec-
tronic media in India were a government monopoly that toed the official line. The print
media at the national level, despite being privately owned, maintained a high standard
of journalism and editorial independence. The media have undergone two major trans-
formations in the last four decades. A sort of new “newspaper revolution” began in the
post-1977 period after the internal national emergency (1975–77) when censorship did
not allow the people to get the real news.41 Then, with the satellite television revolu-
tion, including private channels, India “suddenly got plugged into the world.”42 But
privatization and globalization have more often than not led to crass commercialism
and vices such as “paid news” and only marginally to some high-quality debates on
public issues of the day. But the same pattern is typical of the level of the parliamentary
debates.
More directly relevant in the present context is the practice of direct telecast of
the proceedings of the Parliament. It began with the telecast of the Question Hour
of the Lok Sabha since December 3, 1991, and of both the Houses since December 7,
1994. The decision for live telecast of the entire parliamentary proceedings was taken on
July 25, 1994.43 It was hoped that this would enhance the people’s right to information
and also have a sobering effect on the behavior of the MPs. But it has only led to the
tendency of speaking to the galleries and staging the high voltage drama of the street
politics, often aggressively disruptive, in the houses of Parliament. The proceedings
of parliamentary committees that are not televised are comparatively more purposive,
peaceful, nonpartisan, and consensual.
Among the external factors that have recently tended to adversely impinge on the
preeminence of Parliament as a law making body, the most important are the civil soci-
ety movements that have tended to multiply in the wake of the decline and degeneration
of political parties. Among others, the most telling example of this trend may be seen
in the Anna Hazare-led extra-parliamentary anti-corruption mass protest movement
from the Spring of 2011 to Autumn 2012. The Congress-led United Progressive alliance
government yielded incrementally under its pressure. There was the unprecedented
instance of the direct participation of the civil society in drafting a Lokpal/Lokayukta
bill by a government-appointed joint panel co-chaired by a Union Minister (Pranab
Mukherjee) and a civil society nominee (Shanti Bhushan). When the process was
stalemated, the government and Team Anna proceeded to draft their respective bills
unilaterally, but the government was pressured to refer both the bills to a parliamen-
tary standing committee. The composite constitutional amendment bill approved by
the select committee failed to muster the requisite two-thirds majority in the Lok
Sabha and was roundly thrashed in the Rajya Sabha before it was adjourned sine die
at the midnight of December 31, 2011, on the last day of the winter session. The
government said this was a one-time affair, and a much more truncated version of
the Lokpal/Lokayukta Act was put on the statute book in 2013. However, a glar-
ing precedent of civil society participation in legislative drafting, if not a convention,
was set.44
Parliamentary Supremacy or Judicial Supremacy?

Soon after the commencement of the constitution in 1950, a conflict between the
Parliament and the Supreme Court developed over certain progressive socio-economic
policies of the Congress governments in India and the conservative Supreme Court
that declared them unconstitutional on the ground of the fundamental right to prop-
erty and occupation under article 13 of the constitution. Article 13 considers any law
in contravention of fundamental rights void. The Nehru government moved to enact
the first amendment (1951) to the constitution adding the Ninth Schedule to the text to
park such laws in and put them beyond judicial review. It created a piquant situation
whereby some laws were even higher than the constitution! The Court, however, acqui-
esced to it as indicated by its judgments like Shankari Prasad Singh v. Union of India
(1952) and Sajjan Singh v. State of Rajasthan (1965).45 The Ninth Schedule was after all
an amendment to the constitution itself. The explanatory note in article 13 stipulated
that “law” included legislation, ordinance, order, bylaw, regulation, custom or usage
having the force of law (Article 13, section 3, clause a).
372 India Review
However, in Golaknath v. State of Punjab (1967) the Supreme Court ruled for
the first time that Parliament’s power to amend the constitution stopped short of the
part of the constitution on fundamental rights as the makers had envisioned them in
the image of permanence. The Court clarified that under the doctrine of “prospective
overruling” (that is, a decision of the Supreme Court to confine the doctrine of stare
decisis or the principle of following a precedent to the past transactions only), the first
amendment (1951) and the seventeenth amendment (1964) that had abridged certain
fundamental rights would continue to be valid on the basis of earlier decisions of the
court, but would become invalid for the future. The Golaknath bench also contended
that the explanatory note on the meaning of law in article 13 is illustrative rather than
exhaustive. Amendments were presumably included within the extension of the term
law. The Court also contended that the heading of article 368, “Amendment of the
Constitution” is followed by the explanatory sub-heading “Procedure for Amendment
of the Constitution.” Parliament is therein only a part of the procedure of amendment
and cannot thereby arrogate to itself the constituent power of amendment. “There is no
necessity to imply any such power, as Parliament has the plenary power to make any
law, including the law to amend the Constitution subject to the limitations laid down
therein” (paragraph 25 of the judgment).46
The Indira Gandhi Congress Government reacted by enacting the Twenty-fourth
Constitutional Amendment (1971) to supersede the Golaknath judgement as it had
the result of making the Parliament “to have no power to take away or curtail any
of the fundamental rights even if it became necessary to do so for giving effect to the
Directive Principles of State Policy and for the attainment of the objectives set out in the
Preamble to the Constitution” (Statement of the Objects and Reasons of the Twenty-
fourth Amendment). This amendment altered the subheading of Article 368 to “Power
of Parliament to amend the Constitution and Procedure thereof’.” It also added a new
section (3) “Nothing in Article 13 shall apply to any amendment of this Constitution
(including the provisions of Part III) (Part III relates to fundamental rights).” A new
section (4) read: “No amendment of this Constitution. . . . shall be called in question in
any court of law.” The government proceeded to enact the 25th Amendment (1971) to
curtail the power of judicial review. This amendment gave total immunity to any legis-
lation seeking to give effect to certain directive principles (article 39, sections b and c)
from judicial scrutiny either on the ground that they were inconsistent with fundamen-
tal rights (under article 14, 19 or 31) or on the ground that did not give effect to directive
principles.47 The Supreme Court’s response came in its judgment in Keshavananda
Bharati v. State of Kerala (1973). The court retreated and conceded that the Parliament
had the power to amend any part of the constitution including fundamental rights. But
it bounced back with the ingenious argument that in doing so it cannot alter or destroy
the “basic structure” or “essential features” of the constitution. The constituent power
to amend does not amount to the power to obliterate the existing constitution or write a
new constitution. The constituent power of the magnitude of repealing the constitution
or making a new constitution belongs to only a new Constituent Assembly.48
The consenting majority of the Keshavananda bench and the individual lists of
essential features of the constitution are not uniform in the judgment.49 Its defenders
say that the procedure by which the majority judgment was delivered was a valid one
and the lists are only illustrative and not meant to be, nor can they ever be, definitive
for all time to come.
In some subsequent judgments, the Supreme Court has further illustratively added
to the list of essential features, for example, Minerva Mills v. Union of India (1980), S.R.
Bommai v. Union of India (1994). The 7:6 majority view of the Keshavananda bench
that any law parked in the Ninth Schedule is open to judicial review on the touch-
stone of the basic structure doctrine has been consolidated by a unanimous judgment
of the Supreme Court in I.R. Coelho v. State of Tamil Nadu (2007). By implication
the first amendment stands prospectively overruled and any new amendment to the
constitution is open to judicial review on the criterion of the basic structure of the con-
stitution. In sum, the constitution has vested the power to amend the constitution in
the Parliament (and State Legislatures as ratifying authority in case of federally relevant
structures of governments). However, since Keshavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala
(1973), the Supreme Court has become a decisive co-sharer in this sovereign power.50
The Narendra Modi-led BJP-NDA government has just recently (mid-August
2014) got passed through both houses of Parliament separately, with near unanimity,
the National Judicial Appointments Bill, 2014, and the Ninety-Ninth Constitutional
Amendment Bill, 2014, seeking to give constitutional status to the National Judicial
Appointments Commission (NJAC) for appointment, promotion, and transfer of
judges of the Supreme Court of India and High Courts of states. This portends a new
round of conflict between the highest legislative and judicial branches of the govern-
ment reminiscent of the 1970s. Under the constitution of India judges of the higher
judiciary were initially appointed by the Union Executive in consultation with the
senior most judges at the Union and state levels. Since 1993 this process was replaced
under the case law51 by a judicial collegium comprising the Chief Justice of India and
his few senior most judges who advised the President of India in consultative inter-
action with the Union Cabinet but ultimately with binding effect on the government
on higher judicial appointments. Now the proposed NJAC, which is set to replace the
judicial collegium, is to comprise the Chief Justice of India as chairperson, two other
senior most Supreme Court judges, Union Minister of Law, and two “eminent per-
sons” to be nominated by a committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Chief Justice
of India, and the Leader of the Opposition of the Lok Sabha. One of the eminent per-
sons shall be nominated from amongst Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, minorities,
or women. The advice of NJAC, if not vetoed by any two of its members, is binding on
the President, subject to only one request for reconsideration, which may or may not
be accepted by the Commission. In this communication the Cabinet will only serve as
the transmission belt between the Commission and the President.
The government’s professed objective of the above reform is to ensure the participa-
tion of the executive in the process presently appropriated by the judiciary in the wake
of the executive excesses during the 1970s and the authoritarian Emergency (1975–77).
The increasing incidence of opaque judicial appointments and cases of corruption in the
higher judiciary since 1993 lend some credence to the need for greater judicial account-
ability and transparency. Yet the indecent haste on the part of the first single-party
majority government since the Rajiv Gandhi Congress government (1984–89) and the
ganging up of the ruling as well as the opposition parties in Parliament in favor of the
374 India Review
proposed measures have raised eyebrows and fears of threats to judicial independence
which according to the judicial doctrine of the “basic structure of the Constitution” is
beyond the amending power of aggregate legislatures.52 The constitutional amendment
bill is still subject to ratification by at least half of the state legislatures before being put
up to the President for assent and subsequent notification in the Gazette of India.
Conclusion
The post-1970s literature on the Indian constitution is unanimous about a paradigm
shift in the institutional balance of forces in the political system. The Rudolphs
problematized the evident struggle over stateness: judicial review versus parliamen-
tary sovereignty.53 Granville Austin, writing about “the struggle for custody of the
Constitution” opines: “despite occasional self-inflicted wounds, the Court has been the
bastion of the Constitution. Parliament enjoys the authority to amend the Constitution.
The Court has the authority to measure amendments against the basic structure doc-
trine.”54 Pratap Bhanu Mehta concedes the “rise of judicial sovereignty” in “India’s
unlikely democracy,” but adds “there is a profound inner conflict at the heart of Indian
constitutionalism”:
The question, “Who is the constitution’s final arbiter?” admits no easy answer.
The court has declared itself to be the ultimate judge, and has even assumed the
power to override duly enacted constitutional amendments. . . . In india, parliament
and the judiciary have been and are likely to remain competitors when it comes to
interpreting the constitution.55
Mehta is obviously hinting at the changed and changeable institutional balance of

forces from the one-party Congress dominance of the past to the present multi-party
coalitional system with discordant bicameralism and dissociated national and state
party systems. There is, however, also a tension between Indian constitutionalism and
the national ideological heritage of Gandhian satyagraha and the JP Movement, man-
ifested in the current spate of public protests and movements on a national scale, to
say nothing of recurrent regional and local movements of the old variety (around pro-
duction and distribution) and new variety (around development, gender, ecology). The
deeper political and constitutional issues and implications of these new movements go
beyond representative electoral democracy to participatory/direct democracy.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My major scholarly debts are owed to M. R. Madhavan, Kaushiki Sanyal, and Chakshu Roy of PR Legislative
Research, New Delhi’ India Review’s managing editor, Anthony Cerulli; and an anonymous referee of this journal
for helpful comments for revision and updating of this article. I am also thankful to the officers and staff of the
libraries of the Parliament of India and Indian Institute of Public Administration, both in New Delhi, and Delhi
University Library System, Delhi, for facilitating my research. This research project has grown out of a major
research project funded by the University Grants Commission, New Delhi, I conducted at the University of
Delhi.
NOTES
1. B. Shiva Rao and Subhash C. Kashyap, eds., The Framing of India’s Constitution: A Study Vol. V (New Delhi,
India: Indian Institute of Public Administration, 1968), 420.
2. B. Shiva Rao and Subhash C. Kashyap, eds., The Framing of India’s Constitution: Select Documents Vol. III
(New Delhi, India: Indian Institute of Public Administration, 1967), 538–39.
3. Government of India, Constituent Assembly Debates, Book No. 2, Vol. No. VII (New Delhi, India: Lok
Sabha Secretariat, 2003). Fourth Reprint, 1209.
4. See text of Articles of the Constitution of India serially reproduced (with Notes, if any), for any specific
Articles cited here or hereafter in P.M. Bakshi, The Constitution of India, India, New Delhi: Universal Law
Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., 2013, twelfth edition.
5. Government of India, Constituent Assembly Debates, 1208, 1214.
6. Chetakar Jha, Lecture in M.A. Political Science Class, Patna University, 1962–64.
7. W. H. Morris-Jones, Parliament in India (London, UK: Longman Green, 1957), 265.
8. Morris-Jones, 257.
9. Morris-Jones, 258.
10. http://Forbesindia.com/printcontent/10872 (accessed July 19, 2014).
11. http://Forbesindia.com/printcontent/10872 (accessed July 19, 2014).
12. Supreme Court, Kuldeep Nayar V. Union of India, Supreme Court Cases, 7, (2006):1.
13. Government of India, "Commission on Centre-State Relations" (Report, Vol. II, Constitutional Governance
and the Management of Centre-state Relations, New Delhi, India: Government of India, March 2010)
165–166, Chair Justice M. M. Punchchi.
14. Government of India, "Commission on Centre-state Relations" (Report, Part I, Nasik, India: Government
of India Press, 1988). Ch. 2. Chair Justice R. S. Sarkaria.
15. Government of India, "Commission on Centre-state Relations" (Report, Part I, para 7.4.02), 168–69.
16. Government of India, "Commission on Centre-state Relations" (Report, Part I, para 7.4.01), 168.
17. Interview with Dr. Seema Kaul, Joint Director Lok Sabha Secretariat, New Delhi, India, August 2, 2013.
18. House of Commons (The U.K.), "Second Report from the Select Committee on Procedure, Session 1989–90".
(The Working of the Select Committee System together with Proceedings of the Committee Relating to the
Report, Minutes of Evidence and Appendices, London: HMSO, 23 October 1990), 1: para 219.
19. Courtesy Shastri Indo-Canadian Canadian Institute Library, New Delhi, India.
20. Subash C. Kashyap, “A New Parliamentary Initiative: Subject-Based Standing Committees of Parliament,”
Economic and Political Weekly, Bombay October 6, 1990, 2275.
21. The Journal of Parliamentary Information, XXXIV, No. 1, (March 1993), Editorial.
22. Parliament of India, "Rules Committee (Tenth Lok Sabha)" (First Report, New Delhi, India: Lok Sabha
Secretariat, August 1992); and Parliament of India. "Rules Committee (Tenth Lok Sabha)" (Minutes Relating
to the Second Report of the Rules Committee, New Delhi, India: Lok Sabha Secretariat, March 1993).
23. Parliament of India, “Rules Committee.”
24. Kaushiki Sanyal, “Strengthening Parliamentary Committees,” PRS Legislative Research, November 25, 2011,
http://www.prsindia.org/administrator/ uploads/media/ (accessed January 17, 2013): 2–3.
25. Note 20.
26. Government of India. National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, Report: Review of
the Working of the Constitution, 2002, http://lawmin.nic.in/ncrwc/finalreport.htm (accessed April 14, 2002):
para 5.6.2 Chair Justice M. N. Venkatachaliah.
27. Government of India. National Commission to Review, ch. 5.
28. Lord Bryce, Modern Democracies (London, UK: Macmillan Company, 1921); “The Decline of Legislatures,”
in Legislatures, excerpted as ch. 3 in Philip Norton (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1990), 47–56.
29. M. R. Madhavan, “Accountability through Parliament,” http://www.livemint.com (accessed August 3, 2014).
30. Supreme Court, “D. C. Wadhwa v. State of Bihar.” (All India Reporter, 1987 SC): 579.
31. Chandan Mitra, The Corrupt Society: Criminalization of India from Independence to the 1990s (New Delhi,
India: Viking: Penguin Books India, 1998).
32. Association of Democratic Rights. Pending Criminal Cases on MPs of 15th Lok Sabha Elected in 2009, http://
adrindea.org/images /pdf/ls2009_fullcrimdetails.pdf and http://eci.nic.in 2009a. Courtesy ADR.
33. Association of Democratic Rights, Number of Crorepati MPs of 15th Lok Sabha Elected in 2009,
HYPERLINK http://adrindea.org/images http:/ HYPERLINK http://adrindea.org/images adrindea.org/
images/pdf/ls2009_fullcrimdetails.pdf and HYPERLINK http://eci.nic.in http://eci.nic.in 2009b. Courtesy
ADR.
34. The Economic Times, New Delhi, May 18, 2014, articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-05-
18/news/49926004_1_criminal-charges-clean-candidates-criminal-cases. (accessed on 14.9.2014).
35. Barkha Dutt, Nira Radio All Tapes. www.youbes.com
36. M. R. Madhavan, “Parliament in Public Finance,” http://www.livemint.com, (accessed on 3.8.2014).
37. Kanchan Chandra, “Hardly the End of Dynastic Rule,” Economic & Political Weekly, XLIX, no. 28, July 12,
(2014): 25–28.
376 India Review
38. M. R. Madhavan, “Improving Law Making in India,” livemint.com . . . improving-law-making-in-india.httm;

(accessed on 28.7.2014).
39. Harsimran Kalra, “Food security on table but ordinance sign of democratic failure?” www.governancenow.
com/news/regular-story/food-security-table-ordinance-siggn-democratic-failure (accessed on 16.7.2014).
40. See chapters 8 and 9 by M. P. Singh and Shibani Kinkar Chaube respectively in The Indian Parliament: The
Changing Landscape, edited by B. D. Dua, M. P. Singh, and Rekha Saxena, (New Delhi, India: Manohar,
2014).
41. Vanita Kohli, “The Business of News,” in Uday Sahay, Ed. Making Nwes: Handbook of the Media in
Contemporary India, (New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 2006): 269–273.
42. Vir Sanghvi, “Making of Newspaper” in Making News in Contemporary India, edited by Uday Sahay (New
Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 2006): 54–59.
43. Parliament of India, http://164.100.47.134/internet/pract&proc/chapter-XLV (accessed on 21.8.2014).
44. Mahendra Prasad Singh, “Whether Indian Republic? Representative Versus Direct Democracy”, a paper pre-
sented to International Conference on Governance, Democracy, and Political Parties by School of Humanities
and Social Sciences, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia, & Department of Political Science, University
Hyderabad, India, at Hyderabad, December 1-3, 2012.
45. P.M. Bakshi, The Constitution of India, Eleventh ed. (Text with Notes and Table of Cases) (New Delhi, India:
Universal Law Publishing Co., 2011).
46. Supreme Court, Golaknath v. State of Punjab, All India Reporter, 1967SC: 1643.
47. M.V. Pylee, Constitutional Amendments in India (Textual Documents with an Introduction) (New Delhi,
India: Universal Law Publishing Co., 2003).
48. Supreme Court, Keshvananda Bharati v. State of Kerala. Chief Justice S.M. Sikri, who chaired the 13-judge
Keshavananda bench, summed up the basic structure of the Constitution as follows: “the basic structure may
be said to consist of the following features: (i) Supremacy of the Constitution, (ii) Republican and demo-
cratic form of government, (iii) Secular character of the Constitution, (iv) Separation of powers between the
legislature, the executive, and the judiciary, (v) Federal character of the Constitution. The above structure is
built on the basic foundation i.e., the dignity and freedom of the individual. This is of supreme importance.
This cannot by any form amendment be destroyed.” Quoted in Raju. Ramachandran “The Supreme Court
and the Basic Structure Doctrine” in B.N. Kirpal et.al., eds., Supreme But Not Infallible: Essays in Honour of
Supreme Court of India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), Ch. 8. For a detailed legal exposition of
the basic structure theory, see Sudhir. Krishnaswamy. Democracy and Constitutionalism: A Study of the Basic
Structure Doctrine (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009).
49. T.R. Andhyarujina, The Keshavananda Bharati Case: The Untold Story of Struggle for Supremacy by Supreme
Court and Parliament (New Delhi, India: Universal Law Publishing Co., 2011).
50. For List of cases cited, see Note 47.
51. Laid down and elaborated in the Supreme Court Advocates-on-Records Association v. Union of India, AIR
1994 SC: 368 and In re Presidential Reference, AIR 1999 SC 1:1998.
52. www.prsindia.org/billtrack/the_natioanal_judicial_appointments_commission_bill_2014_3359/;indian
express.com/article/india/politics/rajyasabha/passess_judicial_appointments_bill; wwww.thehindu.com/
opinion/op.ed/national_judicialappointments_commission__fatally-flawed_commission/article_6326265.
ece?ref=relatedNews All (accessed on 27. 10. 2014).
53. Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, In Pursuit Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian
State (New Delhi, India: Orient Longman, 1987), chapter 3.
54. Granville Austin, “The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Custody of the Constitution” in Supreme But
Not Infallible, edited by Kirpal et. al., (New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 2000), 13.
55. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, “India’s Unlikely Democracy: The Rise of Judicial Sovereignty,” Journal of Democracy,
18, no. 2, April 2007, 70–83.

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The Decline of the Indian Parliament

Mahendra Prasad Singh

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