Looking Back at how 16th Lok Sabha performed

With the announcement of election dates on 11 March, country is ready to elect its new Lok Sabha. The term of the current 16th Lok Sabha comes to end on June 3, 2019. In a parliamentary democracy like ours, Parliament as an institution is mandated to debate, legislate and keep the executive and government of the day accountable. As we get ready for an unparalleled display of democracy wherein more than 900 million voters will exercise their right to vote, it’s a perfect time to look back and evaluate how effective our choices, that we made 5 years ago, have been.

Hours of work done by Lok Sabha

There exists a disappointing trend when it comes to hours devoted for legislative and other productive parliamentary businesses. The number of work hours put to productive use have largely been showing a declining trend from 1st Lok Sabha onward. The current Lok sabha has failed to arrest that slide in any major way. Having said that, it did perform better than the 15th Lok Sabha. But then the fact is 15th Lok Sabha was the least productive full term Lok sabha. 16th Lok Sabha is therefore the second least productive full term Lok Sabha if Hours of work done is considered as a benchmark for productivity.


Note that only LS1,LS2, LS3, LS7, LS8, LS10, LS13, LS14, LS15, LS16 have been full term lok sabhas. 

Number of Bills Passed/lapsed/pending

In total 133 bills were passed by the 16th loksabha compared to 179 bills passed by 15th Lok Sabha.  
46 bills across sector will lapse with the dissolution of this Lok Sabha. At the end of 15th Lok Sabha 68 bills lapsed across sectors. 
78 bills are pending before 17th Lok Sabha. Of these 78, some are under scrutiny in various committees whereas other have been passed by Rajya Sabha and will be taken up by 17th Lok Sabha. At the end of 15th Lok Sabha these numbers stood at 60. 

Role of committes:

Though the time spent on discussing bills improved in this lok sabha, no of bills sent to committee reduced. 

Of the total bills introduce in this lok sabha, only 25% of them were referred to committees for scrutiny or consideration. MP's don't have enough time to study and scrutinize the bills in Lok Sabha during debate itself therefore role of committees becomes even more important. Moreover role of committees have taken a hit this time compared to 15th Lok Sabha in which 71% of introduced bill were referred to committees. 

Scruitny of Demand of grants(DoG)

Demand of Grants submitted by various ministries are supposed to be scruitinised by members before they are voted upon. However many times speakers have chosen to guillotine all the demand of grants. When DoG's are guillotined they are clubbed as one and voted as a whole regardless of the fact whether they have been debated or not. 


The DoG's have been guillotined twice( assuming 2016-17 to be full guillotined) during 16th Loksabha compared to once during 15th Lok Sabha. Process like this should be avoided as this robs the Lok Sabha of its mandate of custodian of public funds. 

The diminishing role of parliament as an institution that keeps a check on executive, runs counter parallel to spirit of parliamentary democracy. Parliament must remain a robust platform where government is held accountable. 



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