Keralam

25 Mar 2011

Among the 5 states going to polls, the Kerala Legislative Assembly sat for the largest number of days (240 days in last 5 years) according to National Election Watch, a Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) initiative. This amounts to an average of only 48 days per year. The state passed 135 Bills during the period. Kerala is followed by WB which sat for 219 days in five years (average of 44 days a year) and Tamil Nadu (214 days in five years with an average of 43 days a year).
This compares very poorly with Lok Sabha which in itself sits for small number of days. The current Lok Sabha in last 1.5 years has sat for 135 days which averages to about 90 days in a year. All states have sat way below the number of days Lok Sabha has sat(most has set for less than 50% of the days). The legislative assemblies have been meeting for a very short time despite legislative work being the main task of the MLAs, an ADR statement said. The lowest number of sittings is that of the Puducherry Assembly which sat only for a total of 123 days in last 5 years. The average number of days that these Assemblies sat is way below the Lok Sabha sittings. TN Assembly passed the largest number of bills (225), the lowest numbers of bills were passed by Puducherry(42).