Parliament, Legislatures & the Executive — Practice

Question 1

Why is it inaccurate to assess Parliament's effectiveness primarily by the volume of legislation it passes? (10 marks, ~150 words)

Accepted Answer

In a parliamentary system, the executive is drawn from the legislature and normally commands a majority within it, which means a determined government can almost always secure passage of its legislation. Legislative output therefore measures the government's majority rather than the legislature's effectiveness, and a Parliament passing a large volume of bills rapidly may be exercising less scrutiny, not more. Parliament's distinctive constitutional function is accountability — compelling the executive to explain and justify its actions publicly and on the record, through question hour, debate, committee examination, the budget process and confidence motions. Assessed on that function, the meaningful indicators are the proportion of bills subjected to committee examination, the number of sitting days available for scrutiny, the hours of debate per bill, and whether question hour operates without disruption or curtailment. This distinction matters practically: reforms aimed at increasing legislative throughput can actively worsen performance on the function Parliament actually exists to perform.

Question 2

Distinguish the main types of parliamentary committees and their respective functions.

Accepted Answer

Departmentally Related Standing Committees examine the bills, budget demands and general working of specific ministries, providing continuous oversight between sessions across the whole of government. The Financial Committees perform distinct roles: the Public Accounts Committee examines the Comptroller and Auditor General's audit reports and government expenditure after the fact, and is conventionally chaired by a member of the opposition, institutionalising adversarial scrutiny; the Estimates Committee examines budget estimates and suggests economies in expenditure; and the Committee on Public Undertakings scrutinises the working of public sector enterprises. Ad hoc committees are constituted for a specific purpose and dissolve on completing it — Select Committees of one house and Joint Committees of both are constituted to examine particular bills in detail, and other ad hoc committees may be appointed to investigate a specific matter. The common feature that makes all of them effective is that they meet in private and across party lines, which permits a form of detailed, less adversarial examination that floor proceedings, conducted publicly and along party positions, structurally cannot deliver.

Question 3

"The decline in parliamentary committee scrutiny represents a more serious erosion of accountability than disruptions of proceedings." Critically examine. (15 marks, ~250 words)

Accepted Answer

The comparison is worth taking seriously, because the two problems differ in visibility and in consequence, and the more visible one is not the more damaging.

Disruptions are highly visible and consume sitting time, and their cost is real: question hour lost to disruption is accountability foregone, and repeated adjournment reduces the already limited days available. But disruption is symmetrical in its effects, episodic, and reversible — a disrupted session can be extended, and the underlying capacity for scrutiny remains intact.

Declining committee referral is less visible but structurally more consequential. The proportion of bills referred to committees has fallen from roughly 71% in the 15th Lok Sabha to about 27% in the 16th and approximately 16% in the 17th. Because committees are where clause-by-clause examination, expert evidence and cross-party deliberation actually occur, a bill that bypasses committee scrutiny is never examined in detail at any stage — floor debate on a bill is time-bound, conducted along party lines and cannot substitute for it. The effect is compounded by the contraction in sitting days, with the 17th Lok Sabha holding around 274 sittings, the lowest of any full-term Lok Sabha.

The decisive difference is control. Disruption is imposed by the opposition and constrains the government; non-referral is decided at the government's instance, since referral is discretionary rather than mandatory. A government can therefore ensure its own legislation escapes detailed scrutiny, which is a structural weakening of the accountability relationship rather than a temporary interference with it.

The corrective follows: making referral the default with recorded reasons for any exception would remove that discretion without creating any new institution.

Question 4

Why is the Public Accounts Committee conventionally chaired by a member of the opposition, and what is the significance of this convention?

Accepted Answer

The Public Accounts Committee examines the accounts showing the appropriation of sums granted by Parliament and the Comptroller and Auditor General's audit reports on government expenditure — in effect, scrutinising whether public money was spent as authorised, lawfully, and with due regard to economy. Its examination is retrospective, addressing expenditure already incurred by the government of the day. The convention of an opposition chairperson, followed since the late 1960s, reflects a straightforward institutional logic: a committee scrutinising the government's use of public money loses much of its value if it is led by a member of the party whose government is under examination, since the incentive to pursue uncomfortable findings would be structurally compromised. The significance is that the convention institutionalises adversarial financial scrutiny within Parliament's own machinery rather than relying on it emerging spontaneously. It also gives the opposition a formal role in oversight that does not depend on its numerical strength — a minority opposition that cannot defeat a government on the floor can nonetheless direct detailed examination of its expenditure — which is why the convention's continuation is treated as a meaningful indicator of the health of parliamentary accountability.

Question 5

How did the 91st Amendment change the anti-defection law's treatment of splits and mergers, and why was the change necessary?

Accepted Answer

As originally enacted through the 52nd Amendment in 1985, the Tenth Schedule's paragraph 3 exempted from disqualification a 'split' in which one-third of the members of a legislative party broke away together. The intent was to distinguish genuine collective dissent, which the framers of the provision did not wish to penalise, from individual opportunistic floor-crossing. In practice the provision produced the opposite of its intended effect: rather than protecting principled group dissent, the one-third threshold established a specific, achievable target for organised defection, and engineered splits assembled to meet exactly that threshold became a standard mechanism for toppling or securing governments. The 91st Amendment (2003) responded by deleting paragraph 3 entirely, removing the split exemption, and retaining protection only for a merger — which requires that not less than two-thirds of the members of the legislature party agree to the merger. The change was necessary because the lower threshold had converted a safeguard into an instrument: raising the requirement to two-thirds makes an engineered defection substantially harder to assemble, while still permitting a genuine merger commanding overwhelming support within a legislative party to proceed without disqualification.

Question 6

Examine the problems arising from the Speaker's role as adjudicator under the Tenth Schedule, and evaluate the reforms proposed. (15 marks, ~250 words)

Accepted Answer

The Tenth Schedule assigns the decision on disqualification for defection to the Speaker or Chairman of the house concerned. The structural difficulty is that this officeholder is, in practice, a member of a political party, is elected by the majority in the house, and frequently depends on that majority's continued support — while the disqualification decision typically determines whether that same majority is preserved or lost. The adjudicator's interest is therefore engaged in the outcome, which is precisely the condition adjudication is designed to exclude.

Kihoto Hollohan (1992) addressed part of the problem. The Supreme Court upheld the Tenth Schedule but held that the Speaker functions as a tribunal when deciding disqualification, and that the decision is consequently subject to judicial review on grounds available against a tribunal — while declining to permit judicial intervention before a decision is made.

This left a specific and now well-documented gap. Because the Schedule prescribes no timeline for deciding a petition, a Speaker who wishes to avoid an outcome need not decide against it — indefinite delay produces the same practical effect while leaving nothing for a court to review, since review attaches only to a decision taken.

The reforms proposed follow directly from this diagnosis and differ in ambition. The narrower proposal is a prescribed statutory timeline, after which a petition is deemed decided or transfers to another forum — this closes the delay gap without altering the constitutional scheme. The broader proposal transfers adjudication entirely to the Election Commission or to a judicial body, removing the conflicted adjudicator. The broader reform addresses the root cause more completely, but the timeline reform is more readily achievable and would remove the mechanism through which the conflict currently operates.

Question 7

"The anti-defection law purchased government stability at the cost of parliamentary deliberation." Critically examine. (15 marks, ~250 words)

Accepted Answer

The trade-off the statement identifies is real, and both halves of it are supported by the record.

The stability gain is genuine. Before 1985, frequent floor-crossing produced repeated collapses of state governments and made legislative majorities unreliable between elections. The Tenth Schedule substantially ended individual opportunistic defection, and the 91st Amendment's two-thirds merger threshold closed the engineered-split route that had partly reopened it. Governments now generally serve their terms, and the electorate's verdict is not routinely overturned by post-election realignment.

The deliberative cost is equally real. A legislator who votes against the party whip faces disqualification from the house — not merely expulsion from the party — which means the cost of voting on the merits of a specific bill is the end of the member's term. Since the whip is applied to ordinary legislation and not only to confidence questions, members have no practical scope to vote according to their assessment of a bill's contents, their constituency's interest, or evidence produced in committee. Parliamentary debate consequently loses the possibility of persuasion: no speech can change a vote that is predetermined by party direction, which weakens exactly the scrutiny function the legislature exists to perform.

The most persuasive corrective does not require abandoning either objective. Restricting the whip's application to confidence motions and money bills — where government survival genuinely turns on the outcome — would preserve stability while restoring independent voting on ordinary legislation. This targets the specific mechanism producing the deliberative cost rather than the law as a whole, which is why it recurs across most serious reform proposals on the subject.

Question 8

Explain the ordinance-making power under Article 123 and the constitutional limits on its use.

Accepted Answer

Article 123 empowers the President to promulgate an ordinance when both Houses of Parliament are not in session and circumstances exist rendering immediate action necessary. An ordinance has the same force and effect as an Act of Parliament, but is subject to two conditions: it must be laid before both Houses when they reassemble, and it ceases to operate six weeks after reassembly unless approved by resolution before then. It may also be withdrawn at any time. Article 213 confers a parallel power on Governors, with the additional requirement of presidential instructions in specified cases. The constitutional concern is not the power itself, which addresses genuine need arising between sessions, but re-promulgation — reissuing an ordinance repeatedly as each lapses, so that it remains in force indefinitely without ever obtaining parliamentary approval. In Krishna Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar (2017), a seven-judge bench held that re-promulgation is a fraud on the Constitution and subverts the democratic legislative process, and further held that the satisfaction of the President or Governor in promulgating an ordinance is not immune from judicial review, so that promulgation without genuine necessity can be challenged. The provision's legitimate use is therefore narrow: genuine urgency between sessions, followed by prompt parliamentary consideration.

Question 9

What is the constitutional significance of the Speaker's certification of a bill as a money bill?

Accepted Answer

Article 110 defines a money bill as one containing only provisions dealing with specified matters — the imposition or regulation of taxes, government borrowing, the Consolidated Fund and Contingency Fund, appropriation, and closely related subjects. Article 110(3) provides that if a question arises whether a bill is a money bill, the Speaker's decision is final. The certification carries substantial procedural consequence: a money bill can be introduced only in the Lok Sabha, and the Rajya Sabha may only make recommendations within fourteen days, which the Lok Sabha is free to accept or reject, after which the bill is deemed passed. In effect, certification removes the upper house's capacity to block or materially alter the legislation. The provision exists for a legitimate reason — the house that commands the confidence of the government should control taxation and expenditure, and an indirectly elected chamber should not be able to obstruct the budget. The controversy arises where bills whose contents extend beyond Article 110's enumerated categories are nonetheless certified as money bills, since this uses a financial-procedure exception to bypass bicameral scrutiny on substantive matters the exception was not designed to cover, and the finality clause makes that certification difficult to contest.

Question 10

What genuine discretionary powers does the President of India retain, given Article 74's binding advice?

Accepted Answer

Article 74 requires the President to act on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers, and the 42nd Amendment made this explicitly binding while the 44th Amendment added the power to require the Council to reconsider its advice once, after which the reconsidered advice must be acted upon. The discretionary space is therefore narrow and specific rather than general. Three situations are usually identified. First, the appointment of a Prime Minister where no party or pre-election alliance commands a clear majority — here the President must exercise judgment about who is most likely to command the confidence of the house, though the convention of testing this on the floor substantially constrains that judgment. Second, the dismissal of a government that has lost confidence but has not resigned, and the decision whether to accept a defeated Prime Minister's advice to dissolve the house or instead invite an alternative claimant. Third, the timing of assent under Article 111, which prescribes no period within which the President must act, creating the possibility of an indefinite pocket veto — though the same article requires assent if a bill is returned and passed again. Beyond these, the suspensive power of a single reconsideration under Article 74 is itself a real, if limited, check, since it compels the Council to reconsider on the record.

Question 11

Explain the principle of collective responsibility under Article 75(3) and its practical significance.

Accepted Answer

Article 75(3) provides that the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the House of the People. The principle has two operative components. First, the government holds office only while it retains the confidence of the Lok Sabha — a successful no-confidence motion, or defeat on a matter treated as a confidence question, requires the entire Council to resign, not merely the minister concerned. Second, ministers are bound to support and defend government decisions publicly regardless of the position they took in Cabinet, and a minister unwilling to do so is expected to resign; this is what makes Cabinet deliberation genuinely free, since positions taken internally do not become individually attributable externally. The practical significance is that collective responsibility is the mechanism converting the executive's origin in the legislature into continuous accountability to it. Its combination with the anti-defection law has a specific consequence worth noting: because members risk disqualification for voting against the whip, the confidence mechanism is now far harder to trigger than it was before 1985, which increases stability while reducing the practical availability of the very instrument through which collective responsibility is enforced.

Question 12

Why is question hour considered central to parliamentary accountability, and what weakens it in practice?

Accepted Answer

Question hour requires ministers to answer, on the record and in public, questions put by members about the working of their ministries. Its accountability value comes from three features: it is initiated by individual members rather than controlled by the government, it compels the executive to state facts publicly that it might otherwise not disclose, and starred questions permit supplementary questions, so a minister cannot escape with a prepared answer alone. The information generated frequently supplies the factual basis for subsequent committee examination and public debate. Several factors weaken it in practice. Disruption is the most visible: question hour occurs at the start of the sitting and is frequently lost entirely when the house is adjourned amid protest, so the time forfeited falls disproportionately on this mechanism. Curtailment is a second factor, with question hour reduced or dispensed with in some sessions. A third is answer quality — replies that are technically responsive but substantively uninformative, or that decline to furnish information on broad grounds, satisfy the procedural requirement while defeating its purpose. The cumulative effect is that the mechanism formally survives while delivering considerably less accountability than its design intends.

Question 13

"Executive dominance over the legislature is an inherent feature of the parliamentary system rather than a recent development in India." Critically examine. (15 marks, ~250 words)

Accepted Answer

The claim is partly right, and separating what is structural from what is contingent is the substance of the answer.

The structural case is strong. In any parliamentary system the executive is drawn from the legislature and survives on its confidence, which normally means the government commands a disciplined majority. A legislature whose majority party is the government cannot readily act as an independent check, because the same members who would check the executive are the members who sustain it. This is not an Indian peculiarity — it is a recognised feature of Westminster systems generally, and the reason parliamentary accountability relies on mechanisms that do not require defeating the government: question hour, committee scrutiny, debate, and audit.

But treating dominance as wholly structural obscures what has actually changed in India, and the measurable indicators are recent rather than inherent. The proportion of bills referred to committees fell from roughly 71% in the 15th Lok Sabha to approximately 16% in the 17th. Sitting days have roughly halved relative to the 1950s. The anti-defection law, in force only since 1985, removed the possibility of members voting on the merits of ordinary legislation, foreclosing a check the system originally permitted. None of these is required by the parliamentary form — the same system operated with substantially higher scrutiny within living institutional memory.

The defensible conclusion is that the executive's structural advantage is inherent, but the erosion of the compensating scrutiny mechanisms is contingent and reversible. That distinction matters practically, because it locates the remedy: not in redesigning the parliamentary system, but in restoring the specific mechanisms — default committee referral, adequate sitting days, protected question hour — that were designed to offset an advantage the system always granted.

Question 14

What distinct functions does the Rajya Sabha perform that the Lok Sabha cannot, and how do these justify a second chamber?

Accepted Answer

The Rajya Sabha performs several functions the lower house cannot, and these constitute the functional case for bicameralism in India. Under Article 249, it can authorise Parliament to legislate on a State List subject in the national interest by a two-thirds resolution — a power vested specifically in the chamber representing the states. Under Article 312, its resolution is required to create a new All India Service, again reflecting its federal character. As a permanent body that is never dissolved, with one-third of members retiring every two years, it provides continuity across dissolutions of the Lok Sabha and prevents any single electoral wave from producing complete legislative turnover. Its indirect election by state legislative assemblies gives states a formal voice in central law-making. And its provision for nominated members brings expertise from literature, science, art and social service into the legislature independently of electoral politics. The revising function is the most commonly cited: a second chamber examining legislation already passed by the first provides a check against hasty or ill-considered enactment. The most substantial criticism is that this revising function is precisely what money-bill certification bypasses, which is why the two topics are frequently examined together.

Question 15

Distinguish the political executive from the permanent executive and explain the accountability tension between them.

Accepted Answer

The political executive comprises ministers — the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers at the Union level — who hold office through electoral and parliamentary processes, determine policy, and are answerable to the legislature under Article 75(3). The permanent executive comprises civil servants, who are recruited on merit, hold office irrespective of changes of government, implement policy under ministerial direction, and provide continuity and technical expertise across administrations. The constitutional division assigns policy responsibility to ministers and implementation to officials, with ministers answerable to Parliament and officials answerable to ministers. The accountability tension arises because outcomes depend on both, while the answerability structure separates them. A minister is questioned in Parliament for an implementation failure they did not cause and may have had limited capacity to prevent; a civil servant whose decisions produced the failure is not directly answerable to the legislature and is shielded by the convention that officials act in the minister's name. Conversely, an official may be held responsible internally for outcomes determined by a policy choice they advised against. The practical consequence is diffused accountability at exactly the point where responsibility for results should be locatable, which is why proposals for clearer role definition and for outcome-based accountability frameworks recur in administrative reform literature.

Practice — Parliament, Legislatures & the Executive

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