When Parliament Is Held Hostage

Parliament is often romanticised as the beating heart of Indian democracy. In practice, it is something more exacting and less forgiving: a constitutional instrument designed to convert disagreement into governance. Its authority does not lie in how loudly dissent is expressed, but in whether the institution can still function when political tempers run high.


It is in this context that the recent Budget session must be assessed. The Union Budget was passed amid sustained Opposition disruption, and the Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address was adopted without the Prime Minister’s reply. These were not routine procedural footnotes. They were symptoms of a deeper parliamentary breakdown—one that raises uncomfortable questions about how dissent is being practised in India’s highest legislative forum.


Dissent, unquestionably, is central to democracy. But dissent that repeatedly prevents Parliament from functioning risks crossing a line—from scrutiny to sabotage. At a moment when constitutional responsibility demanded legislative continuity, persistent disruption left little space for debate, response, or closure.


The Constitution does not envisage Parliament as a site of permanent protest. It anticipates disagreement and protects minority voices, but it also assigns time-bound duties that cannot be deferred indefinitely. Foremost among these is the passage of the Budget. No modern state can function without authorised expenditure. Government salaries, welfare payments, infrastructure commitments, defence preparedness, and routine administration all depend on it. To obstruct the Budget is not to inconvenience the executive; it is to stall the machinery of the State.


India’s parliamentary history is replete with examples of robust Opposition protest. Walkouts, adjournments, and sharp interventions have long been part of the political vocabulary. But their legitimacy has rested on an implicit understanding: protest draws its strength from the institution it seeks to influence. When disruption becomes continuous and deliberation impossible, Parliament risks losing its character as a forum of accountability and degenerating into a theatre of deadlock.


This tension was on full display during the recent session. Repeated uproar from Opposition benches crowded out structured discussion. The consequences were not merely symbolic. Even the Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address—a cornerstone of parliamentary practice—was passed without the Prime Minister’s reply. This was not a matter of executive evasion or political choice. It was the direct result of an atmosphere in which orderly exchange had become unworkable.
The Prime Minister’s reply to the Motion of Thanks is not a personal privilege or a ceremonial flourish. It is a substantive parliamentary convention through which the executive responds to criticism, clarifies intent, and places its legislative priorities on record. When that reply does not take place, it is Parliament that loses. The damage is institutional, not individual.
This episode illustrates a paradox at the heart of contemporary parliamentary politics. Protest, intended to amplify dissent, can end up silencing it. By preventing response, it forecloses the very accountability it claims to demand.


In such moments, the burden on the treasury benches and the presiding officers becomes acute. They face a difficult choice: wait indefinitely for order to return or proceed with constitutionally mandated business. Critics argue that continuing proceedings amid disorder weakens democratic norms. The concern is not illegitimate—but it is incomplete.


Constitutional governance cannot be hostage to ideal conditions. The Constitution does not permit a vacuum of authority simply because consensus collapses. Nor does it sanction paralysis as a bargaining tool. The executive, accountable to Parliament and ultimately to voters, carries a parallel obligation: to ensure continuity of the State. To indefinitely suspend essential fiscal and legislative business would amount not to democratic sensitivity, but to institutional abdication.


Procedure, often derided as technical or restrictive, is in fact democracy’s stabilising force. It exists to ensure that institutions survive moments of excess, confrontation, and political brinkmanship. To allow procedure to operate under strain is not to diminish democracy, but to preserve it.


The role of presiding officers must be understood in this light. Their responsibility is not to referee political grievances or weigh competing moral claims, but to safeguard the functioning of the House. Allowing Parliament to descend into prolonged dysfunction does not strengthen democratic ethics; it quietly corrodes them.


There is also a broader democratic cost. When Parliament repeatedly fails to deliberate, public confidence in representative institutions weakens. Citizens begin to see the House less as a forum of argument and resolution, and more as a site of perpetual confrontation. That erosion of trust does more long-term damage to democracy than any single contested procedural decision.


None of this diminishes the importance of a vigilant Opposition. Scrutiny, challenge, and dissent are indispensable to parliamentary democracy. But vigilance need not harden into veto. Protest need not culminate in paralysis. The true strength of an Opposition lies not in its capacity to halt proceedings indefinitely, but in its ability to influence debate, shape public opinion, and hold the government accountable within the institutional framework.


Parliamentary democracy rests on an unspoken compact: that while political contestation may be fierce, the institution itself remains inviolate. Procedure is not the enemy of dissent; it is what makes dissent intelligible and effective.


The Budget’s passage amid disruption, and the adoption of the Motion of Thanks without the Prime Minister’s reply, do not reflect Parliament at its best. But they underline a constitutional reality that cannot be wished away. Governance cannot pause indefinitely—and democracy cannot survive if disruption becomes its default language.