NEW DELHI: State legislatures across India passed more than 600 bills in 2025, their highest tally in recent years, yet assembled for an average of just 24 days and sent fewer than one in twenty bills to committees for scrutiny, according to the PRS Annual Review of State Laws 2025, which covered 27 states and three Union Territories.
The Jharkhand assembly, as shown by this report, functioned for 21 long years without having a deputy speaker. According to Article 178 of the Indian Constitution, all the assemblies are mandated to have a full-time deputy speaker for all the sessions.
Further, this report showed that, in 2025, the different state assemblies met for 24 days on average. Odisha topped this list, with 43 sitting days. Nagaland assembly, with only 7, was at the bottom of the list. The national average of 24 days is an improvement over 21 days in 2024 and 23 days in 2023 but still falls well short of the targets that states have set for themselves in law or procedure.
Roughly 30 per cent of bills, according to this report, were passed on the day of their introduction onto the floor of the House. Legislatures of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Mizoram, Puducherry and Punjab passed every bill either on the same day or the next.
Karnataka cleared 17 bills in a single sitting. Similar divergence was observed in the discussion of the budget oversights. Assemblies across the country, on average, debated their budgets for 8 days.
Tamil Nadu debated on this for 27 days, while Punjab wrapped it up within two. Goa, Haryana and Tamil Nadu were the states where, in the assembly, 100 per cent of proposed expenditure was placed before the House for discussion. But, in Assam, only 23 per cent of the expenditure plans were put to debate.
Sixty-six per cent of the bills received assent from the governor within one month, while 94 per cent did within three.
States issued 127 ordinances in 2025, up from 100 in 2024, a 27 per cent rise. Local governance accounted for 31 per cent of all ordinances, trailed by education at 13 per cent. The legislative calendar was similarly weighted: local governance, education and taxation together formed 45 per cent of all Bills. Thirteen states established new universities. Karnataka and Tamil Nadu moved against coercive microfinance lenders.
Several states enacted Jan Vishwas-style laws converting criminal penalties into civil ones. Karnataka tabled both a hate speech and hate crimes bill and a crowd control bill. Assam passed an anti-polygamy law and reserved 25 per cent of private university seats for state students.