Disruption in Parliament: What lost time costs citizens and democracy | Explained | Today’s news

Time is money is a famous saying. But when Parliament loses roughly 80 hours of functioning per meeting due to interruptions and interruptions, how much money is actually lost?

Well, there is no single answer to this question. While it is more often said that ” ₹2.5 lakh per minute” Parliament is interrupted. However, there is no official amount dumped as such. In fact, the government says the data cannot be shared with the public as it is not considered “information” under the 2005 RTI Act.

Read also | Parliament’s cost to taxpayers: What government said in RTI reply | Mint special

Chaos and silliness are commonplace in parliamentary sessions. The Monsoon Session held last month was no exception as such. The dispute between the ruling dispensation and the opposition parties often wastes the time of the House and adversely affects the very purpose of the Parliament.

Figures from the Lok Sabha Secretariat revealed that the lower house lost 330 hours and 18 minutes (13 days, 18 hours, 18 minutes) during the eight sessions (so far) of the 18th Lok Sabha, formed after the 2024 general elections. However, the House “gained” some of that time by sitting late to complete stock exchange business.

Data Source: Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Secretariat

This further prompts many to express concern about the huge amount of money spent on the running of the House being wasted due to disruption of proceedings. Not only money, but the disruption of the lower house and the lower “productivity” of the parliament have an impact on democracy as well.

Mayuri Gupta, Senior Resident Fellow Milon K Banerji at Charkha, Vidhi’s Constitutional Law Center explains what the productivity of Parliament really means, what the trend of productivity in the last few years shows, how it can affect democracy and why wasting time in parliamentary functions must concern ordinary citizens. Gupta received her Juris Doctor from Gujarat National Law University in 2026 and completed her LL.M. in Constitutional and Administrative Law from Gujarat National Law University in 2017. Here is what she had to say:

1. What does it mean when we say that Parliament’s productivity is low?

In the context of the Indian Parliament, the productivity of the House refers to the amount of time it spends carrying out its scheduled business compared to the total time allotted for sitting. A session is therefore considered low productivity when a significant portion of scheduled time is lost, often due to interruptions and repeated interruptions.

Thus, productivity is basically an indicator of time use. For example, the Monsoon Session of Parliament this year (July 20-August 13, 2026) saw low productivity amid repeated disruptions.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said that the productivity of the Lok Sabha was only 19%, while the productivity of the Rajya Sabha was 39%. (See here) However, this is not an isolated case.

Several parliamentary sessions in the past have also seen significant disruption and significant loss of scheduled working hours. (Follow PRS Legislative Research’s work on parliamentary productivity here)

2. What data reveal the trend in Parliament’s productivity over the past few years?

A closer look at the functioning of the Parliament reveals a substantial decrease in the number of days it sits in comparison to previous decades. During the 1950s, the Lok Sabha met an average of 120 days a year.

This number fell to around 70 days a year in 2000. The decline has continued in recent years: the 17th Lok Sabha (2019–2024) sat for an average of only 55 days a year. Fewer sitting days means less time available to parliament to debate legislation, scrutinize government policies and hold the executive to account. However, if we look at data from recent years, Parliament’s productivity varies considerably across sessions.

For example, like the current Monsoon Session, the 2025 Monsoon Session saw low productivity, with the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha functioning at 29% and 34% respectively. However, the winter session of the same year saw high productivity, with the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha functioning at 103% and 104% of their scheduled time, respectively.

Here, too, a comparatively smaller proportion of time was devoted to legislative matters, several important bills being discussed and approved within a few days of their introduction. Thus, even if the Parliament has functioned for a long time and used the total time allotted for sittings, the nature and depth of legislative discussions and scrutiny may remain insufficient.

Credit: Lok Sabha Secretariat

3. How much money goes into holding parliamentary sessions and how much is lost when the House is repeatedly disrupted or productivity is low?

There is no current audited data to reflect the actual cost of holding a parliamentary session in India. In 2012, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Bansal estimated that the cost of Parliament would be approx ₹2.5 million per minute session.

If ₹The figure of 2.5 million is only used as a notional value of parliamentary time, the 7,023 minutes of parliamentary time allegedly lost during the 2026 monsoon session would be approx. ₹175.6 million crowns.

But financial costs are only one part of the picture. Higher costs are opportunity costs due to low productivity and interruptions. The costs of low productivity and disruption are therefore both financial and institutional, and are much more difficult to quantify.

4. What causes the decline in parliamentary productivity? What are the possible indicators?

The decline in parliamentary productivity can be a result of various factors such as repeated riots, disagreements between the government and the opposition on topics to be discussed, planning and management of parliamentary time and business, etc.

Attributing low productivity solely to opposition-led disruptions or, conversely, to the government’s reluctance to engage in debate would oversimplify a complex problem. It is therefore important to examine the institutional, political and procedural factors that influence the allocation and use of parliamentary time.

5. Why should it concern every citizen?

This is perhaps the most important question. Parliamentary productivity may sound like a topic that should concern only MPs, journalists and constitutional lawyers. But it is important for every individual.

Parliament is the institution through which the citizens indirectly control the Union Government. For example, a citizen must never meet the Union Railway Minister and directly demand an explanation of a delayed railway project.

However, their elected MP can raise the issue in Parliament and ask the government to explain its actions. Question Hour and other parliamentary mechanisms therefore provide an indirect channel for citizens to obtain information and demand accountability from the executive.

So when parliamentary time is lost and business is disrupted, one of the few formal mechanisms through which an individual MP can coerce information from the executive is lost. The same concerns arise when bills are passed without adequate debate or scrutiny.

When a law is guillotined or passed with little time for debate, MPs have fewer opportunities to scrutinize its provisions, question the government, propose amendments and bring concerns raised by their constituents into the legislative process.

This can create an awareness and accountability gap: citizens may end up being governed by laws whose implications have not been adequately discussed in the open forum of parliament.

6. What impact does this have on democracy?

Low parliamentary productivity can weaken democracy because parliament is not only a legislative body; it is a forum for representation, deliberation and executive accountability.

When MPs have less time to speak, ask questions and raise public concerns, citizens have fewer opportunities to make their voices heard. Similarly, when disruptions or rushed meetings limit debate and scrutiny of bills, MPs have fewer opportunities to challenge, challenge, amend and scrutinize legislation.

This weakens the deliberative process and can reduce executive accountability. Ultimately, it is not just that Parliament does less work, but that democratic representation, scrutiny and informed law-making suffer.

7. How low productivity and disruptions can strain Parliament’s backend/administrative operations?

Low parliamentary productivity and frequent disruptions have significant downstream administrative consequences. The draft law goes through a number of administrative and procedural stages before and after its presentation in the House. Each phase requires the work of parliamentary secretariats, ministries, committees and, in many cases, government departments.

Read also | Monsoon session of parliament in numbers

When parliamentary business is not completed as planned, it creates a backlog. An unadopted bill does not simply disappear from the secretariat’s workload. Depending on its procedural status, it remains part of the pending legislative process.

These backlogs need to be processed, rescheduled, transferred, reintroduced, reviewed, or in some cases abandoned. This creates administrative costs even where no additional expenditure is immediately visible.

Therefore, parliamentary productivity should be assessed not only in terms of time used, but also in terms of the productivity of parliamentary transactions and deliberations.