SESSIONS OF PARLIAMENT

• The power to convene a session of Parliament rests with the government. The decision is taken by the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs, which currently comprises nine ministers, including those for Defence, Home, Finance, and Law.
• The decision of the Committee is formalised by the President, in whose name MPs are summoned to meet for a session
• India does not have a fixed parliamentary calendar. By convention, Parliament meets for three sessions in a year.
• The longest, the Budget Session, starts towards the end of January, and concludes by the end of April or first week of May.
• The session has a recess so that Parliamentary Committees can discuss the budgetary proposals
• The second session is the three-week Monsoon Session, which usually begins in July and finishes in August.
• The parliamentary year ends with a three week-long Winter Session, which is held from November to December
• A general scheme of sittings was recommended in 1955 by the General Purpose Committee of Lok Sabha.
• It was accepted by the government of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, but was not implemented.

• The summoning of Parliament is specified in Article 85 of the Constitution. Like many other articles, it is based on a provision of The Government of India Act, 1935.
• This provision specified that the central legislature had to be summoned to meet at least once a year, and that not more than 12 months could elapse between two sessions
• Dr B R Ambedkar stated that the purpose of this provision was to summon the legislature only to collect revenue, and that the once-a-year meeting was designed to avoid scrutiny of the government by the legislature.
• On the floor of the Constituent Assembly, he said: “We thought and personally I also think that the atmosphere has completely changed and I do not think any executive would hereafter be capable of showing this kind of callous conduct towards the legislature.”
• His drafting of the provision reduced the gap between sessions to six months, and specified that Parliament should meet at least twice a year
• He argued that “The clause as it stands does not prevent the legislature from being summoned more often than what has been provided for in the clause itself
• During the debate, members of the Constituent Assembly highlighted three issues: (i) the number of sessions in a year, (ii) the number of days of sitting and, (iii) who should have the power to convene Parliament

• Over the years, governments have shuffled around the dates of sessions to accommodate political and legislative exigencies. In 2017, the Winter Session was delayed on account of the Gujarat Assembly elections.
• In 2011, political parties agreed to cut short the Budget Session so they could campaign for Vidhan Sabha elections in five states.
• Sessions have also been cut short or delayed to allow the government to issue Ordinances.
• For example, in 2016, the Budget Session was broken up into two separate sessions to enable the issuance of an Ordinance
• Sessions have been stretched — in 2008, the two-day Monsoon Session (in which a no-confidence motion was moved against the UPA-I government over the India-US nuclear deal) was extended until December.
• The ostensible reason was to prevent the moving of another no-confidence motion. It meant that there were only two sessions that year