Assembly sittings

Assembly sittings

Subject: Polity

Section: State Legislature

Context: Kerala tops in holding Assembly sittings in 2021.

Content:

• Kerala, which slipped to the eighth slot in holding Assembly sittings during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, returned to the top spot in 2021, with its House sitting for 61 days, the highest in the country.
• In fact, between 2016 and 2019, Kerala remained at the top with an average of 53 days.
• The PRS Legislative Research (PRS), a New Delhi-based think tank’s findings say that, Odisha followed Kerala with 43 sitting days; Karnataka 40, and Tamil Nadu 34 days.
• Of the 28 State Assemblies and one Union Territory’s legislature, 17 met for less than 20 days. Of them, five — Andhra Pradesh, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura and Delhi — met for less than 10 days.
• As for the ordinance route, which should be, according to the Supreme Court, used under exceptional circumstances, 21 out of 28 States promulgated ordinances last year.
• Kerala had promulgated 144 ordinances, the highest in the country which is followed by Andhra Pradesh with 20 ordinances and Maharashtra with 15.

Concept:

Article 170– Composition of the Legislative Assemblies.

Subject to the provisions of Article 333, the Legislative Assembly of each State shall consist of not more than five hundred, and not less than sixty, members chosen by direct election from territorial constituencies in the State.

However, an exception may be granted via an act of parliament in the states of Goa, Sikkim, Mizoram and UT of Puducherry.

Recommendations:

• The National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (2000-02), headed by former Chief Justice of India M.N. Venkatachaliah, had prescribed that the Houses of State (/Union Territory) legislatures with less than 70 members, for example, Puducherry, should meet for at least 50 days a year and other Houses (Tamil Nadu), at least 90 days. (Ten fall under the first category; 20 under the second).

Ordinance making powers of the Governor

• Just as the President of India is constitutionally mandated to issue Ordinances under Article 123, the Governor of a state can issue Ordinances under Article 213, when the state legislative assembly (or either of the two Houses in states with bicameral legislatures) is not in session.
• The powers of the President and the Governor are broadly comparable with respect to Ordinance making.
• However, the Governor cannot issue an Ordinance without instructions from the President in three cases where the assent of the President would have been required to pass a similar Bill:

(a) a Bill containing the same provisions would under this Constitution have required the previous sanction of the President for the introduction thereof into the Legislature; or

(b) he would have deemed it necessary to reserve a Bill containing the same provisions for the consideration of the President; or

(c) an Act of the Legislature of the State containing the same provisions would under this Constitution have been invalid unless, having been reserved for the consideration of the President, it had received the assent of the President

DC Wadhwa vs. State of Bihar (1987)

It was argued in the legislative power of the executive to promulgate Ordinances is to be used in exceptional circumstances and not as a substitute for the law making power of the legislature.  Here, the court was examining a case where a state government (under the authority of the Governor) continued to re-promulgate ordinances, that is, it repeatedly issued new Ordinances to replace the old ones, instead of laying them before the state legislature.  A total of 259 Ordinances were re-promulgated, some of them for as long as 14 years.  The Supreme Court argued that if Ordinance making was made a usual practice, creating an ‘Ordinance raj’ the courts could strike down re-promulgated Ordinances.