112 Bills passed in 135 sitting days: A report card of the outgoing Madhya Pradesh Assembly

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan

Madhya Pradesh will head to polls on November 28 to elect a new legislative assembly. Counting of votes will happen on December 11 along with Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Telangana.

The tenure of the current assembly is slated to end on January 7, 2019.

The Madhya Pradesh assembly has a total of 231 seats. This includes 230 elected representatives and one nominated member. The state has been governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since 2003.

Here’s a look at the performance of the outgoing assembly:

Bills and their passage

According to a report by PRS Legislative Research, the 14th Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly passed a total of 112 Bills during its tenure. Out of these, 15 Bills created new Acts while 95 Bills amended existing Acts. Two Bills repealed existing Acts.

Maximum number of Bills were piloted by the Finance and Taxation and Higher Education ministries.

Out of the 34 Bills that the Finance and Taxation Ministry introduced, 31 Bills were meant to amend Acts related to Value Added Tax (VAT), excise, the State Finance Commission, among others. Three Bills passed by the Assembly helped enact new Acts related to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and cess on motor spirit and high speed diesel.

Some of the important Bills passed by the Assembly include the Madhya Pradesh Economic Assemblies and the Lower Income Group Housing Guarantee Bill, 2017; the Madhya Pradesh Private Schools (Regulation of Fees and Related Themes) Bill, 2017; and the Madhya Pradesh Industrial Security Force Bill, 2015.

Also read: MLAs were paid Rs 149 crore in salaries and allowances

The Bills had a relatively easy passage in the Assembly. Around 89 percent of them were passed within a week of introduction, according to the report.

During Question Hours, ministers answered 39 percent of the listed questions orally on the floor of the House. On an average, around 10 questions were orally answered by the ministers in a day.

Also read | 161 crorepati MLAs, 73 with criminal cases: A glance at Madhya Pradesh's outgoing Assembly

Sittings

The outgoing Assembly sat for a total of 135 days across five years. This is 32 days less than the previous Assembly had between 2009 and 2013. The 13th Assembly had sat for 167 days. It sat for around 27 days in a year, on average.

The report adds that between 2011 and 2016, the Assembly sat for an average of 35 days in a year even as 26 other state Assemblies in the country sat for an average of 28 days in a year during the same period of time.

In terms of the number of sitting days, performance of the Madhya Pradesh’s outgoing Assembly was average. The report compares sitting days of 26 state Assemblies. Assemblies in Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha and Jammu and Kashmir topped the list (in that order) with an average of around 43 days.

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