Parliament Session Washed Out Who Will Hold MPS Accountable?

Poonam I Kaushish

99% perspiration, 1% inspiration. Parliament’s Monsoon Session once again delivered a master class in that: doing everything except the job for which our MPs are elected. The session was a washout, with barely 19% business completed. Imagine, an employee doing 19% work and still expecting full salary, perks and privileges. In any organization it would invite disciplinary action. In Parliament, it is business as usual.

Shouting, sloganeering, adjournments, accusations followed by sanctimonious speeches about democracy. Certainly, Opposition has every right to challenge Government which must face uncomfortable questions as Parliament was never meant to be a rubber stamp. But there is a fundamental difference between holding Government accountable and preventing Parliament from functioning.

Scandalously, Parliament was not merely disrupted it was outrageous abdication of responsibility. Whereby, MPs effectively treated the temple of democracy as a private club sans accountability. Consider: Lok Sabha passed 12 Bills of which, 11without debate, 9 with no MP present, except the Minister concerned. Only the Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill 2026 saw detailed discussion, 11 hours with 48 MPs participating.

In fact, Parliament abysmally failed to rise to the challenge before it: Open its doors to issues raised by Gen Z to bridge the gulf between sadak and sansad. While Opposition felt it had for once managed to wrest the narrative and optics from BJP by rejecting Shah’s offer of debate on police violence on protestors, “We don’t want to hear lecture,” which was seen as Government’s attempt to wrest back the narrative.

The tragedy is that pandemonium has become a political strategy. Parties calculate that making Parliament dysfunctional instead of scrutinising, debating and holding Government accountable can generate greater social media footage than making a compelling argument in the House. A minute of shouting produces more headlines than an hour of painstaking legislative scrutiny. Theatrics have replaced deliberation. And we pay for it.

And therein lies the joke. When Parliament is repeatedly paralysed, the taxpayer gets neither a refund nor an explanation. There is no performance review, no attendance-linked accountability, no independent audit of productivity and certainly no mechanism by which an MP or Party can be held financially or politically responsible for deliberately wasting Parliamentary time.

Every hour lost in Parliament is not merely an institutional statistic. It is taxpayers’ money. It is legislation delayed. It is questions unanswered. It is policy that cannot be properly debated. It is committees deprived of material for scrutiny. It is citizens who are repeatedly pushed to the back of the queue. Yet nobody seems embarrassed.

The astonishing part? The complete absence of institutional accountability. Who audits Parliament’s performance? Who asks why hundreds of scheduled hours were lost? Who determines whether disruptions were justified or politically manufactured? Who measures what individual MPs contributed to legislative business? Who explains why citizens should continue to fund a system in which elected representatives can collectively fail and individually escape scrutiny?

Disturbingly, nobody. The problem goes beyond one session or one Party. It is systemic. Government and Opposition might fight like cats and dogs inside Parliament, but when it comes to protecting their privileges and comforts there is remarkable bipartisan harmony. One side disrupts Parliament today; the other might do it tomorrow. The rules change depending on who occupies the Treasury benches.

Precisely, why Parliamentary accountability cannot be left to political morality, it needs institutional safeguards. There should be a transparent public dashboard recording attendance, participation, questions asked, debates joined, private members’ bills introduced and committee work undertaken by every MP. Citizens should be able to see, in one place, what their elected representative actually did during a Parliamentary session.

Importantly, there must be consequences for deliberate and repeated disruption. Why should an MP who repeatedly obstructs proceedings face no meaningful financial consequence while a Government employee can lose pay for absence or misconduct? Why should MPs and Parties be allowed to waste crores of public money through collective disruption without being asked to explain themselves?

Who is going to hold the washouts accountable? Until that question has an answer, Parliament will remain perhaps the only workplace in India where failure can be spectacular, expensive and repeated, and yet nobody has to clock it out.

Besides, are Parties interested in Parliamentary reform? Perhaps, not, as the existing system suits them. When in Opposition, disruption can be used as a weapon. When in Government, Parliamentary majority can be used to bulldoze business. Either way, genuine institutional reform remains conveniently somewhere between rhetoric and oblivion.

The result is a Parliament increasingly trapped between noise and numbers — noise from Opposition and numbers with which Government can push legislation through. What gets squeezed out is the thing democracy needs most: reasoned debate.

What next? Parliament needs fewer excuses, fewer adjournments and far more accountability. Work is not optional merely because you have a title. A functioning democracy is not measured by how loudly politicians disagree. It is measured by whether disagreement ultimately produces better governance. Rules need teeth. Disruption should carry proportionate consequences

Either way, the failure and lost opportunity must be owned by both Government and Opposition, the former more than the latter as it’s the Government’s responsibility to ensure the House runs and legislation is debated and discussed, not just passed by voice vote, by dint of an arithmetic majority. For this, Government needs to show accommodation and generosity.

The irony is breathtaking. Politicians routinely lecture citizens about their duties. They tell young people to work harder, taxpayers to pay on time, bureaucrats to perform, businesses to be productive and institutions to remain accountable.

Time Parliament tries taking its own advice. Democracy gives politicians the right to disagree. It does not give them the right to waste public resources with impunity. There is also a deeper danger. Every washed-out session chips away at public faith in Parliament. When citizens repeatedly see MPs fighting instead of functioning, they begin to wonder whether democratic institutions are actually serving them or serving our netagan.

Sadly, this is not the first time that an entire session has been written off nor will it be the last. The question is not why Parliament was washed out but who is going to hold the washouts accountable? Until that is answered, Parliament will remain the only workplace where failure can be spectacular, expensive and repeated, and nobody has to clock it out!

Ultimately, Parliament belongs neither to Government nor Opposition. It belongs to citizens. Its chambers are not political theatres. They are workplaces funded by us. The onus is on our MPs to collectively find ways to show they are responsible and responsive. That Parliament is not just about ruling-Opposition MPs it seats, but its willingness to listen, debate and legislate, something this session lost sight of.

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