Parliament is central to India’s democratic system as the main arena for law-making, debate and holding the executive accountable. However, in recent years, questions have been raised about how effectively the institution is performing these functions. Much public and media attention in this debate has been on disruptions of parliamentary proceedings, while the depth of legislative debate and the extent of scrutiny given to proposed laws is less critiqued.

An analysis of data related to the functioning of the last four Lok Sabhas (2004-2024) shows that Parliament has passed more laws in less time over the past roughly one decade, but this 'efficiency' has come at the expense of deliberation and oversight. In earlier years, disruptions of parliamentary proceedings due to the 2G spectrum case, coal allocation policy, Andhra Pradesh’s bifurcation and other such matters ate into roughly one-third of parliament’s scheduled hours. In fact, the 15th Lok Sabha (2009 to 2014) could sit for only 61% of its allotted time.

Under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) governments headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi since 2014 (seen up to 2024), Parliament’s lost time fell as the government controlled the agenda, even as sessions became shorter. And there was a sharp erosion in scrutiny of the legislative agenda. The number of bills referred to parliamentary committees dropped sharply with each session, an indication the quality of laws is no longer prioritised as before.

Even floor debates have been truncated: over one-third of bills in the 17th Lok Sabha were passed after less than one hour of discussion. Major budgets were often rubber-stamped – about 80% of budget proposals between 2019 and 2023 were voted on without debate. The attendance of Members of Parliament was high, and question hours were formally held. However, in the 2014-2024 period, engagement beyond the mere presence of Members of Parliament weakened. Lok Sabha sat for just 60% of the scheduled question hour time from 2019-2024 and only 24% of listed questions were answered.

Important financial committees, like the Estimates Committee, Public Accounts Committee and standing committees – including the one on defence – also showed a consistent decrease in functioning under the NDA regime.

Taken together, Lok Sabha is active but mechanically and muted in terms of substance. Laws are passed swiftly but without scrutiny, keeping productivity high, but consensus-building low.

The transformation is also evident in the role of the prime minister within Parliament. In the United Progressive Alliance government’s two terms in power (2004-2014) the low-profile leadership of prime minister late Dr Manmohan Singh operated within a parliament-centric political system. By contrast, the Modi years have witnessed highly visible executive leadership, but operating largely outside parliamentary forums.

This suggests a gradual shift away from parliamentary engagement towards direct executive-public communication.

Here is a look at the eight key indicators of parliamentary activity that led to these conclusions, These range from attendance, working time of Parliament, activities related to laws and committees, debates and participation of prime ministers. While the number of bills introduced in each session are considered in this analysis, so is the number of bills referred to parliamentary committees, questions asked and answered in Parliament, among other factors.

Data and sources

Most of the data for this analysis has been sourced from the "resume of work done" document on Digital Sansad and the "Vital Stats" provided for each session by PRS Legislative Research. Calculations on data based on Digital Sansad were conducted by this author, directly using numbers from the PRS website to compare the working aspects such as productivity, committee referrals and suspension of Members of Parliament. For aspects not covered in official documents, such as prime ministers' foreign visits, I relied on news articles and other public resources. Note that the 2004-2024 period provides a significant opprtunity for such a study since it includes two consecutive terms of ten years each for two different governments, the UPA from 2004 to 2014 and the NDA from 2014 to 2024.

What causes disruptions?

The 15th Lok Sabha (2009-2014) lost significantly more time to disruptions than the Lok Sabhas that preceded or followed it. Around 30-37% of its scheduled working hours were lost to adjournments and protests, compared to roughly 12-16% in the 14th, 16th and 17th Lok Sabhas. Major causes included the 2G spectrum and coal allocation controversies, as well as protests over the creation of Telangana.

During the 16th Lok Sabha, demonetisation in 2016 and the Cauvery water dispute in 2018 took up a fair amount of parliament’s time, while the Parliament security breach and subsequent mass suspensions in 2023 weighed heavily on the sittings of the 17th Lok Sabha.

Disruptions may be strategic or spontaneous – their reasons must be understood to understand their significance beyond hours-lost data. Therefore, the question arises, beyond the lost hours, what was the quality of the remaining time? Put differently, was the lost time worth the “disruption”?

A closer look shows large year-to-year fluctuations in “productivity” of Lok Sabha, with several sharp spikes in the mid-2000s and the 2019-2020 period, followed by a steep decline.

However, productivity has been on average at par with the last decade due to bills being passed amidst chaos, especially via voice vote during disruptions. This has translated into a high "work rate" on paper despite the House not functioning in a deliberative sense.

In 2023, the entire budget was passed without a single word of discussion amidst chaos, yet the session's productivity was still recorded as high because the "work" (the passing of the bill) was technically completed.

Besides, the 17th Lok Sabha was the shortest full-term House since 1952 in terms of actual sitting days. By condensing work into fewer days and working longer hours on those days, the “per-session productivity” remains high while the total volume of parliamentary oversight declines.

Attendance of MPs

Both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha have moved from manual registers to electronic attendance systems. This means not only formal check-ins are captured but continuous presence during sittings as well. Reviews of the attendance records indicate Members of Parliament are present but not engaged. Certain office holders, including the Prime Minister, are exempted, and intra-day absenteeism or reasons for absence are not indicated.

While higher attendance can suggest more engagement and accountability, every once in a while, there are reports of elected representatives engaging in frivolous activities while supposedly attending a session

That said, persistent absenteeism undermines reliability, erodes the principle of representation and limits Parliament’s capacity to question the executive.

Overall attendance has remained relatively stable and moderately high, generally between 70-85% across most years. Attendance improved gradually during the mid-2010s, peaking around 2014-15. Around 2020-21, due to COVID-19, a sharp decline in attendance was seen.

The number of MPs with very low attendance has declined. Reports tracking parliamentary performance show that MPs attending less than 50% of sittings have steadily decreased across recent Lok Sabhas

Attendance varies across parties and individual Members of Parliament. For example, in the 17th Lok Sabha, those from the Telugu Desam Party recorded the highest attendance, on average. Some smaller parties recorded much lower averages.

‘Efficiency’ at the cost of MPs

While disruptions have decreased since the 15th Lok Sabha, the number of Members of Parliament suspended has increased. This suggests that earlier Lok Sabha Speakers relied on repeated adjournments to manage disruptions, whereas in recent times, the use of formal suspension powers by the presiding officer has increased.

From 2014 onwards, under NDA rule, suspensions of Members of Parliament rose sharply, peaking in 2023 with 146 parliamentarians suspended (100 in Lok Sabha 46 Rajya Sabha) in a single winter session, curtailing opposition presence.

Suspension was concentrated in a few sessions rather than being evenly spread across the Lok Sabha terms. This indicates suspensions are typically triggered by specific political flashpoints rather than “routine” disorder.

Note that a raw count of suspensions does not consider their duration, reasons or impact on committees. These counts can indicate procedural discipline or political strategy, but without context, they may not accurately represent how legislation is scrutinised or how well constituents are represented.

Parliament questions

Questions and answers in parliament gauge executive responsiveness and oversight, and accordingly they are grouped into four categories – starred, unstarred, short-note and questions to private members. While the starred questions require an oral answer on the floor of the House and permit supplementary questions, unstarred questions receive written replies and have no room for raising supplementary questions.

Short notice questions relate to matters of urgent public importance requiring notice of usually less than 10 days and are answered orally. Questions to private members seek information from non-minister Members of Parliament regarding bills or resolutions introduced by them.

The 17th Lok Sabha marked a twenty-year high in oral scrutiny, with approximately 21-24% of starred questions being answered on the floor of the house. Whereas unstarred questions dipped during the 16th Lok Sabha to 93%, for most of the sessions, it remained nearly 100% of the admitted questions.

There is a ‘productivity paradox’ here. While the percentage of (unstarred) questions answered during the 17th Lok Sabha was high, the total time available for question hour has been shrinking due to disruptions. Thus, the house has become more efficient at answering questions during the hours it operates, but it operates for fewer hours than in earlier decades.

However, a question count ignores the substance of what is being asked and whether it has wider implications for the constituency or country. Besides, written replies can be evasive, pro forma, or incomplete.

Bills sent to committees and discussion in Parliament

Greater referral rates and longer debates are likely to improve deliberative quality, provide an opportunity for consensus building and allow expert inputs to be incorporated.

Between the 15th and 17th Lok Sabhas, there was a crash in the share of Bills referred to committees from 71% to 16%. The referral process itself weakened from the 15th to the 16th Lok Sabhas, but the discussion on Bills increased. In the 16th Lok Sabha, 32% of bills were discussed for more than three hours, compared to 22% in the 15th Lok Sabha and 14% in the 14th Lok Sabha. However, in the 17th Lok Sabha, 35% of bills were passed with less than an hour of discussion.

Several legislation were passed with less than one hour of discussion. These include, the Farm Laws Repeal Bill, 2021, Mineral Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2020, the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, and the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008.

Such haste means reduced scrutiny. If Bills are not sent to parliamentary committees, there is a risk of technical flaws, lack of consensus and missed expert inputs. The repeal of the farm laws, after a year-long agitation by affected farmers, is one example of this.

Parliamentary committees

There are a number of institutional structures to debate legislation, ranging from financial committees like the Public Accounts Committee, Estimates Committee, Committee on Public Undertakings or department-related standing committees (24 in number), which scrutinise demands for grants, examine bills, etc. or business advisory committee, or the committees on petitions, subordinate legislations, etc.

The frequency of their sittings indicate active legislative scrutiny, detailed examination of policies and budgets and sustained oversight of ministries and vice versa.

The figure above shows a decline in the number of sittings of the Estimates Committee, and a spike in the number of sittings of the Committee on Public Undertakings (CoPU). The surge in CoPU sittings during the 16th Lok Sabha was largely a reaction to specific financial distress in Public Sector Units rather than a permanent, regular pattern of scrutiny.

The figure below reports the average number of sittings of standing committees of the Parliament. Here, the committee on defence shows the sharpest decline, from 33 sittings per year in the 14th Lok Sabha to less than 10 in the 17th Lok Sabha. Given that defence is one of the largest expenditure heads in the Union Budget, this decline is worrying.

Committees are becoming "administrative follow-up" bodies rather than "investigative" ones. In the 17th Lok Sabha, nearly 50% of all committee reports were Action Taken Reports as opposed to substantive reports on legislation, policy subjects, or budgetary demands.

Foreign visits

In a parliamentary system, the presence of the prime minister in Parliament during critical sessions, where executive accountability is sought, is crucial when gauging the quality of governance. One of the major critiques of the Opposition during former prime minister Manmohan Singh's term was his frequent foreign visits during parliamentary sessions. The same scrutiny has been applied to Prime Minister Modi as well as Singh's term.

During Manmohan Singh’s terms, foreign visits overlapped with parliamentary sessions, for which the BJP and the media repeatedly criticised him. In the second term of the UPA in power, a large share of Singh’s foreign visits coincided with parliamentary sessions.

Modi undertook five more visits per year on average than Singh in his time as prime minister, and the pattern of overlap with parliament sessions continued. Modi also was not present in Lok Sabha frequently, even when he was in India. Yet his visits are framed by his party, the BJP, and the media as energetic, high-visibility diplomatic visits rather than lapses towards his parliamentary duty.

Dr Singh’s presence in parliamentary sessions was characterised by more formal policy rollouts and regular statement-tabling. He maintained a strict presence during question hours relevant to the Prime Minister’s Office. Modi’s presence has strategically maximised his floor time during marquee constitutional milestones, such as the Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address or No-Confidence Motions, while his routine presence during standard legislative bill debates is minimal.

Ordinances passed

Ordinances allow laws to be made when Parliament is not in session. Frequent reliance on ordinances signal delays in legislative discussion, reduced parliamentary scrutiny or difficulties in securing consensus within Parliament.

The UPA government passed 61 ordinances from 2004-2014 (around 6.1 a year) while the Modi-headed government has passed 76 ordinances from 2014-2021 (around 10 a year), including the farm laws passed in a hurry in June 2020. Growing use of ordinances also indicates executive centralisation and decreased accountability.

Aayushi Singh graduated from IIT Delhi in 2026 and is a public policy enthusiast.

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