Holding States To Account

Context: With better data, state legislatures will come under much-needed scrutiny.

Gauging the efficiency of legislatures in India

• Lack of sufficient data: Information and data on state legislatures is not easily available. While some state legislatures publish data on a regular basis, many do not have a systematic way of reporting legislative proceedings and business.
• Presence of Upper House:
  • Most states are unicameral, with legislative assemblies. Some (Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana, UP) have a legislative council.
  • Most states have scrapped legislative councils for valid reason - they delayed the passing of legislation and required additional expenditure, funded indirectly by citizens.
  • A similar argument exists about the Rajya Sabha, especially with the domicile requirement removed, but there is a Supreme Court judgment (Kuldip Nayar versus Union of India and others, 2006) on that.
• Decline in number of sittings: As a benchmark, the Parliament met for 33 days in 2020. Pre-2020, these 19 states met for an average of 29 days a year.
• Passing of the bills without detailed scrutiny:
  • States passed an average of 22 Bills (excluding Appropriation Bills). Karnataka passed 61 Bills, the highest in the country. The lowest was Delhi which passed one Bill.
  • In 2020, 59 per cent of the Bills were passed on the same day that they were introduced in the legislature; a further 14 percent were passed within a day of being introduced.
  • The committees similar to the Parliamentary Committees are absent in the state legislatures.
• Salary rationalisation: While the states of Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Uttar Pradesh decided to reduce the emoluments by 30 per cent, there are many states who did not do it.