Is a legislative council needed?
The manner in which Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council Chairman M A Shariff referred Bills on the decentralisation of administration to a select committee has prompted the Jagan Mohan Reddy government to question the rationale behind having the Upper House. The Andhra CM’s arguments are not new as he finds himself in more or less the same circumstances as N T Rama Rao in the early 1980s. If it was the then Congress-dominated Council that obstructed his government’s policies, it is now the turn of the TDP-dominated House to come in the way of the YSRC government. Parties have changed but politics hasn’t.
The case against the House of Elders has always been that it is used more often to rehabilitate jobless politicians, straining the public exchequer, and that it delays important legislations over political considerations. The other side of the argument is that it serves as a sobering influence on the Lower House and provides an opportunity for minorities and intellectuals, who may otherwise find it difficult to make their voice heard in electoral politics. Currently, only six states have Legislative Councils while Rajasthan, Assam, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh are in the queue to get Parliamentary approval to revive the Council. Bills for creating councils in Rajasthan and Assam have been pending for years. In this context, it is instructive to remind ourselves of the Constituent Assembly debate on bicameral legislature in states.
Dr B R Ambedkar wasn’t particularly in favour of an Upper House in states and likened it to the curate’s egg—good only in parts. Importantly, he stressed that it was being introduced purely as an experimental measure and that states could get rid of it. From what we have seen over the decades since, the experiment hasn’t yielded good results though Councils played a constructive role on occasion. Given these circumstances, it will be prudent to leave it to the states. Framing of a national policy, as a parliamentary standing committee suggested a few years ago, may not be the best way forward.