Why in the News

The Parliament session that has just concluded again ended in near total dysfunction, with the Opposition choosing disruption when its demands for discussion were refused and the government treating accommodation as weakness. The deadlock has exposed a deeper failure than obstruction, since the presumption of mutual good faith that makes a deliberative chamber possible has itself broken down.

What is Rule 377 of the Lok Sabha?

What it allows: Rule 377 lets a member raise a matter of public importance that is not covered by any other procedural device, by reading a short statement on the floor.
What follows from it: No debate takes place and no vote is held, but the matter goes on the record and is forwarded to the concerned ministry for a response.

What does a disrupted session actually cost?

Public money: The cost of running a sitting is borne by the taxpayer whether or not business is transacted, so lost hours are a direct fiscal loss.
Executive questioning: Members lose the opportunity to question ministers, which is the principal instrument through which the House holds the executive to account.
Constituency and national issues: Members lose the chance to raise constituency matters in Zero Hour and issues of national importance under Rule 377.
Scrutiny of legislation: Bills are passed amid the din, so members do not place their views on the legislation on the record before it becomes law.
The compounding effect: Each lost sitting increases the volume of business to be disposed of in the remaining ones, which entrenches the practice of passing bills without debate.

Why has the relationship between government and Opposition hardened?

A lost civility: A former Prime Minister recounted being treated with courtesy by the first Prime Minister when he was a young Opposition backbencher, having his medical care in the United States arranged by a later Prime Minister, and being sent to Geneva by another Prime Minister to represent India at a critical United Nations summit on Kashmir.
What replaced it: Politics has moved to mutual demonisation, in which each side claims absolute virtue and writes the other off as beyond redemption.
The language of delegitimisation: Dissent is branded anti national by the ruling side, and the Opposition casts itself as an outnumbered force facing a resource rich establishment.
The condition that has been lost: Democracy requires a basic presumption that even a fierce rival cares about the nation's welfare and differs only on the means.
The consequence for governance: Treating an adversary as an existential enemy removes the common ground on which any governing agreement rests.

Why is the decline a collective failure rather than one side's?

The role reversal: The present ruling party was equally uncompromising when it sat in Opposition and used obstruction as a tool of executive accountability.
Position determines principle: Those who once defended parliamentary obstruction discovered on taking office that disruption had become an unpardonable sin.
Why the sermon fails: The Opposition, having endured those tactics for years, rejects the demand that it now abstain from them.
The operating code: The reciprocal rule of Indian politics has become the reverse of the golden rule, to do unto them what they did unto you.
The implication: No reform proposal will hold if it is framed as a demand on one side alone.

Why does parliamentary skill not translate into electoral reward?

What voters actually reward: Members are elected and re elected for the constituent services they render and the local political strength they command.
What voters do not reward: The ability to press a minister during Question Hour or to dissect a flawed bill has almost no bearing on re election.
Where the talent went: Debating ability has migrated from the floor of the House to television studios, where it earns visibility.
What parties signal: Whips who direct members into the well of the House for organised shouting tell members that partisan aggression is valued above parliamentary excellence.
The result: The incentive structure of a political career now runs against the skills the chamber was designed to use.

What has displaced deliberation inside the House?

Two distinct political skills: Parties once valued both the mass mobilisation of the politics of the street and the debating capacity of the politics of Parliament.
The displacement: The politics of the street has moved inside Parliament, leaving the politics of Parliament with no space of its own.
The cost to national consensus: Discourse is impoverished and agreement across parties on any question of national progress becomes unattainable.
Where work still gets done: Parliamentary committees continue to function usefully, largely away from media attention and without the cameras that reward disruptive grandstanding.
What the public sees: The visible record is disruption, the absence of dialogue and a complete breakdown of communication, which has made disillusionment with Parliament widespread.

How has the executive's own conduct diminished the chamber?

Attendance as signal: The first Prime Minister attended Parliament daily and treated it as the centre of Indian democracy, while the present Prime Minister rarely attends the House.
From consultation to announcement: Parliament has been reduced from a consultative chamber in a deliberative democracy to a noticeboard for announcing executive decisions.
From scrutiny to ratification: It functions as a rubber stamp for legalising decisions already taken outside it.
Refusal to accommodate: The government declines to concede even part of the Opposition's demand for discussion, which removes the incentive for the Opposition to abandon disruption.
Where this leads: Custodians of the institution are hollowing it out to a point where the public will not miss it once it is rendered meaningless.

Is disruption a tool of accountability or the cause of Parliament's decline?

The case for disruption: Where the presiding officer refuses admission of a subject and the government refuses discussion, obstruction is the only leverage a numerically weaker Opposition holds.
The case against it: Disruption destroys the very forum through which accountability is exercised, so the tool consumes the thing it defends.
Why both sides are locked in: The government gains legislative throughput from a disrupted House, and the Opposition gains visibility from disruption, so neither has an incentive to stop.
What the deadlock protects: Bills pass without scrutiny while the disruption itself supplies the explanation for why they were not scrutinised.
The unresolved question: If Parliament is allowed to lose all purpose, nothing in the constitutional design substitutes for the accountability it was built to deliver.

What reform is proposed?

Guaranteed Opposition time: Grant the Opposition one day a week, or two hours a day, to raise any issue it considers essential.
Protected government time: Allow the remaining business of the House to proceed undisturbed for the rest of the sitting.
Why it addresses the cause: The Opposition disrupts because it cannot compel discussion, so a guaranteed slot removes the reason for obstruction rather than penalising it.
The precedent: The device is used successfully in other parliamentary democracies, where Opposition Days are part of the calendar rather than a concession.
What it requires: A change in the Rules of Procedure and the political imagination to concede time the government currently controls.

Challenges to restoring Parliament's deliberative role

Declining sitting days: A House that meets for fewer days each year cannot absorb the business before it, whatever the conduct inside it. e.g. the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution recommended a minimum of 120 sitting days for the Lok Sabha, a figure recent years have not approached.
Legislation without committee scrutiny: Bills are passed without reference to a Standing Committee, removing the one stage where cross party examination happens. e.g. major legislation has repeatedly been passed in the same session in which it was introduced.
Mass suspensions as a management tool: Removing members ends the disruption and ends the scrutiny with it. e.g. 146 members were suspended across both Houses in the Winter Session of December 2023, the largest such action since Independence, during which several bills were passed.
The money bill route: Classifying a measure as a money bill limits the Rajya Sabha's role to recommendations, bypassing the second chamber's scrutiny. e.g. the classification of the Aadhaar legislation as a money bill was contested up to the Supreme Court.
Ordinance dependence: Legislating through ordinances shifts law making out of the chamber altogether. e.g. re promulgation of ordinances was held to be a fraud on the Constitution in Krishna Kumar Singh v State of Bihar (2017).
Anti defection constraints on debate: The whip system leaves individual members with little room to vote or argue independently of the party line. e.g. the Tenth Schedule attaches disqualification to voting against a party direction, which removes the incentive to master a bill's substance.
Non justiciability of proceedings: Article 122 bars courts from inquiring into proceedings on grounds of irregularity of procedure, so internal failures have no external remedy. e.g. decisions of the presiding officer on admissibility and suspension are protected by parliamentary privilege.

Conclusion

Parliament's decline is not reducible to Opposition obstruction or to executive contempt, since each sustains the other and both are rewarded by the present incentive structure. The chamber has lost the presumption of mutual good faith on which deliberation depends, and the electoral system independently rewards constituency service and street mobilisation over legislative skill. Guaranteed Opposition time is the concrete proposal on the table, and it addresses the cause rather than punishing the symptom. Without it, the House continues to function as a noticeboard, and the public stops noticing when it stops working.

What is executive accountability to the legislature?

About: Executive accountability is the principle that a government drawn from the legislature must continuously answer to it for its decisions, its expenditure and its administration.
Rationale: In a parliamentary system the executive is not separately elected, so the legislature is the only forum through which the electorate's control over the executive is exercised between elections.
The named instruments of accountability:
Collective responsibility: The Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the House of the People, which can remove it by a vote of no confidence.
Question Hour: The first hour of a sitting, in which ministers answer starred questions orally with supplementaries and unstarred questions in writing.
Zero Hour: The period immediately after Question Hour, an Indian innovation with no mention in the Rules, in which members raise urgent matters without notice.
Financial control: No tax may be levied and no expenditure incurred without parliamentary authorisation, enforced through the Budget, the demands for grants and the cut motions.
Committee scrutiny: Department related Standing Committees, the Public Accounts Committee, the Estimates Committee and the Committee on Public Undertakings examine policy, expenditure and audit findings away from the floor.

Key Concerns Regarding Executive Accountability in India

Shrinking parliamentary time: The number of sitting days has fallen steadily, compressing the time available for questions, debate and scrutiny.
Legislation without scrutiny: A declining share of bills is referred to committees, so detailed examination of clauses does not occur before enactment.
Guillotine on demands for grants: Most demands for grants are voted without discussion when time expires, which weakens the financial control that is the legislature's oldest power.
Executive control of the agenda: The government decides what business is listed and when, so it can decline the discussion the Opposition seeks.
Delegated legislation: Substantial policy content is left to rules framed by the executive after enactment, and these rules receive little parliamentary examination.
The vacant Deputy Speaker's office: A prolonged vacancy in an office that Article 93 requires to be filled removes an institutional check inside the presiding structure.

Constitutional Framework Governing Parliament's Functioning

Article 75(3): Makes the Council of Ministers collectively responsible to the House of the People, the source of the no confidence motion.
Article 85: Requires that six months not elapse between the last sitting of one session and the first sitting of the next, and provides for prorogation and dissolution.
Article 93: Requires the House of the People to choose a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker from among its members.
Article 94: Provides for vacation, resignation and removal from the offices of Speaker and Deputy Speaker, and continues the Speaker in office after dissolution until the first sitting of the new House.
Article 96: Bars the Speaker from presiding while a resolution for removal from office is under consideration, while permitting participation and a first instance vote.
Article 100: Fixes the quorum at one tenth of the total membership of the House.
Article 105: Guarantees freedom of speech in Parliament and the immunity of members from court proceedings for anything said or any vote given in the House.
Article 107 and Article 108: Govern the passage of bills through both Houses and provide for a joint sitting to resolve a deadlock.
Article 110: Defines a money bill and fixes the Speaker's certificate as conclusive.
Article 118: Empowers each House to make rules regulating its own procedure and conduct of business.
Article 122: Bars courts from inquiring into parliamentary proceedings on the ground of an alleged irregularity of procedure.

How does the House deal with disruption?

Rule 373, immediate withdrawal: Where the Speaker considers a member's conduct grossly disorderly, the Speaker may direct the member to withdraw for the remainder of that day's sitting, acting unilaterally with no motion and no vote.
Rule 374, naming and suspension: Where a member persistently and wilfully obstructs business or disregards the authority of the Chair, the Speaker names the member, a motion for suspension is moved, and the House passes it by simple majority for the remainder of the session or a shorter period.
Rule 374A, automatic suspension: Inserted in 2001 for members entering the well or persisting in disorder after a warning, this allows the Speaker alone to declare suspension for five consecutive sittings or the remainder of the session, whichever is less.
Why Rule 374A is contested: It requires no floor vote, it cannot be rescinded by the House, and it places no cap on the number of members suspended at once.
Rule 380, residual power: Where no specific rule covers a situation, the Speaker may deal with the matter as they think fit, and the decision is not justiciable.
The recorded scale of suspensions: 19 Rajya Sabha members were suspended in July 2022, 7 Lok Sabha members in December 2022, and 146 members across both Houses in December 2023, the largest mass suspension since Independence, of whom 97 were in the Lok Sabha and 49 in the Rajya Sabha.

Source: Backgrounder, Speaker Controversies.docx

Which instruments let a member force a discussion?

Adjournment Motion, Rule 56: Raises a definite matter of urgent public importance and interrupts the entire day's listed business, requires 50 members to rise when the Speaker reads the notice, and results in a vote, so its passage is a strong censure of the government.
Calling Attention Motion, Rule 197: A one member device that draws a minister's attention to a matter of urgent public importance, obliges a statement in reply, and does not interrupt listed business or result in a vote.
Short Duration Discussion, Rule 193: Raises a matter of urgent public importance for discussion of not more than two and a half hours, requires two supporting members, and obliges a ministerial response without a vote.
Grounds for refusing an adjournment motion: The matter must be a recent occurrence rather than a chronic problem, must not be sub judice, and may be diverted to Question Hour or Zero Hour at the Speaker's discretion.
The weakness of the calling attention route: The minister may give a holding or evasive reply, and the Speaker may not press for a substantive answer or allow adequate supplementaries.
The discretion that decides everything: The Speaker has full discretion to refuse an adjournment motion or a short duration discussion, with no reasons required, which is why refusal is the trigger for disruption.