Delhi Election: 20 sittings per year, 23 Bills passed in less than one day — how the outgoing Assembly performed

File image of the Delhi Legislative Assembly (Image: Twitter/@DelhiAssembly)

Delhi is voting to elect its seventh Legislative Assembly. The tenure of the current Assembly is scheduled to end on February 22.

Voters in all 70 constituencies will head for polling in a single phase on February 8 (Saturday). Counting of votes will happen on February 11 (Tuesday).

In the 2015 Assembly election, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won a whopping 67 seats. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the remaining three. The Indian National Congress failed to win any.

Also read: Key factors that will impact the capital contest

Here’s a quick look at how the outgoing Legislative Assembly functioned, based on analysis by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Delhi Election Watch (DEW):

The Delhi Assembly sat in session for around 20 days per year. Its longest session ran for 16 sittings from March 16 to April 10, 2018.

There were multiple one-day sessions between 2015 and 2017.

The Assembly was adjourned 34 times during the five-year period. While the least number of adjournments came in the year 2016 (three), the highest number of adjournments happened in 2018 (12).

AAP MLA Ram Niwas Goel is the Speaker of the sixth Assembly.

Legislative business

As many as 44 Bills were tabled in the Assembly during the tenure. All of these were passed. In fact, 23 of these Bills were passed on the same day as they were introduced on.

Eleven other Bills took one day to get passed. There were four Bills that took seven or more days to be cleared by the Assembly.

As many as 23 Bills were passed in the first year if the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government. The number fell to six in 2016, before rising by one in 2017. Sessions in year 2018 led to passing of six Bills. Two Bills were passed by February 2019.

Some of the key Bills passed by the Delhi Assembly were: The Delhi School Education (Amendment) Bill, 2015; The Delhi Right of Citizen to Time Bound Delivery of Services Amendment Bill, 2015 and Delhi Janlokpal Bill, 2015.

On an average, a Delhi Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) asked 215 questions during the tenure.

These came during the average 77 of the total 101 sittings they attended.

The analysis is based on information (up to February 2019) received from the Delhi Assembly Secretariat in response to an RTI application filed by ADR and DEW.