Parliament Disruptions: What Lost Time Costs Citizens And Democracy Explained

(MENAFN- Live Mint) Time is money is a famous adage. But when Parliament loses roughly 80 hours of functioning in a session due to interruptions and disruptions, how much money is actually lost?

Well, there is no one answer to this question. While more often than not it is said that " ₹2.5 lakh per minute" are lost when proceedings of Parliament are disrupted. But there is no official amount wasted available as such.

In fact, the government says that the data cannot be shared with the public as it is not considered "information" under the RTI Act, 2005.

Also Read | Parliament cost to taxpayers: What govt said in RTI reply | Mint Special

Chaos and bedlam are a common sight during Parliament sessions. Monsoon Session held last month was no exception as such. The stand-off between the ruling dispensation and opposition parties often leads to the wastage of time of the House and adversely affecting the very purpose of Parliament.

Data from the Lok Sabha Secretariat revealed that the lower house lost 330 hours and 18 minutes (13 days, 18 hours, 18 minutes) across the eight sessions (so far) of the 18th Lok Sabha, formed after the 2024 general elections. The House, however, "gained" some of this time by sitting late to complete listed business.

This further prompts many to raise concerns about the huge amount of money spent on running the Houses, which goes to waste due to the disruption of proceedings. Not just the money, but the disruptions of the House and the lower "productivity" of Parliament also impact democracy.

Mayuri Gupta, who is a Milon K Banerji Senior Resident Fellow at Charkha, Vidhi's Constitutional Law Centre explains that what the productivity of Parliament really means, what productivity trend in the past few years shows, how it may impact democracy and why loss of time in Parliamentary functions must concern common citizens. Gupta earned her Doctorate in Law 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 said:

1. What does it mean when we say the productivity of Parliament is low?

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

Thus, productivity is fundamentally an indicator of time utilisation. For instance, the Monsoon Session of Parliament this year (20 July–13 August 2026) recorded low productivity amid repeated disruptions.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijij stated that the Lok Sabha's productivity was only 19%, while the Rajya Sabha's stood at 39%. (See here) However, this is not an isolated instance.

Several parliamentary sessions in the past have also witnessed substantial disruptions and significant loss of scheduled working time. (Follow PRS Legislative Research's work on Parliamentary Productivity here)

2. What data reveal about Parliament's productivity trend in the past few years?

A closer look at Parliament's functioning reveals a substantial decline in the number of days it sits compared with earlier decades. During the 1950s, the Lok Sabha met for an average of 120 days a year.

This figure fell to around 70 days a year in the 2000s. The decline has continued in recent years: the 17th Lok Sabha (2019–2024) sat for an average of just 55 days a year. Fewer sitting days mean less time available for Parliament to debate legislation, scrutinise government policies and hold the executive accountable. However, if we look at the data from the recent years, the productivity of the Parliament has been quite volatile across sessions.

For instance, just like the current Monsoon Session, the 2025 Monsoon Session saw low productivity with the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha functioning for 29% and 34% respectively. However, the Winter Session in the same year marked a high productivity with the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha functioning for 103% and 104% respectively of its scheduled time.

Here also, a comparatively smaller share of time was spent on legislative business, with several important Bills discussed and passed within a couple of days of introduction. So even when the Parliament has functioned for a substantial time and utilised the total time allotted for the session, the nature and depth of legislative discussions and scrutiny may remain inadequate.

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

There is no contemporary audited data that reflects the actual cost of holding a parliamentary session in India. In 2012, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Bansal estimated that Parliament cost approximately ₹2.5 lakh per minute of sitting time.

If the ₹2.5 lakh figure is used merely as a notional value of parliamentary time, the 7,023 minutes of parliamentary time reportedly lost during the 2026 Monsoon Session would amount to approximately ₹175.6 crore.

But financial cost is only one part of the picture. The higher cost is the opportunity cost of lost business resulting from low productivity and disruptions. The cost of low productivity and disruption, therefore, is both financial and institutional, and the latter is much harder to quantify.

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

A decline in parliamentary productivity can result from various factors such as repeated disruptions, disagreements between the government and the opposition over issues to be discussed, scheduling and management of parliamentary time and business, etc.

Attributing low productivity solely to Opposition-led disruptions or, conversely, to the government's unwillingness to accommodate debate would oversimplify a complex problem. It is, therefore, important to examine the institutional, political and procedural factors that affect how parliamentary time is allocated and utilised.

5. Why should it concern every citizen?

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

Parliament is the institution through which citizens indirectly exercise control over the Union government. For instance, a citizen may never meet the Union Railway minister and directly demand an explanation for a delayed railway project.

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

Thus, when parliamentary time is lost and the business is disrupted, one of the few formal mechanisms through which an individual MP can compel information from the executive is lost. The same concern arises when Bills are passed without adequate discussion or scrutiny.

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

This can create an information and accountability gap: citizens may ultimately be governed by laws whose implications have not been adequately debated in the open forum of Parliament.

6. What impact does it have on democracy?

Low parliamentary productivity can weaken democracy because Parliament is not merely a law-making 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 for their voices to be heard. Similarly, when disruptions or rushed proceedings limit debate and scrutiny of Bills, MPs have less opportunity to question, challenge, amend and examine legislation.

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

7. How low productivity and disruptions may burden backend/administrative operations of Parliament?

Low parliamentary productivity and frequent disruptions have significant downstream administrative consequences. A Bill passes through a series of administrative and procedural stages before and after it is introduced in the House. Each stage requires work by the Parliamentary Secretariats, ministries, committees and, in many cases, government departments.

Also Read | Parliament's monsoon session in numbers

When parliamentary business is not transacted as scheduled, it create a backlog of unfinished business. A Bill that is not taken up does not simply disappear from the Secretariat's workload. Depending on its procedural status, it remains part of the pending legislative business.

These pending businesses have to be processed, rescheduled, carried forward, reintroduced, re-examined 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 the time utilised, but also in terms of the productivity of parliamentary transactions and deliberation.

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