HRD at Parliament in the 3 years of NDA-2

In the next 3 weeks, the 16th Lok Sabha and the NDA-2 Government under Narendra Modi will be completing 3 years. In these 3 years, it has had fairly reasonable success in pushing through several legislation in both the houses of Parliament. In fact, up to April 2014, the Government has been successful in pushing through 122 bills in both houses thus converting them into Acts (and amendments to the Constitution, as applicable).

From a #Core point of view, the most important ministry, undoubtedly, is the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD). In this post, let us look at the legislative performance of the MHRD in the first 3 years of the Government.

Note:

1. The analysis here is only corresponding to Bills. Other legislative activity such as reports, answers to questions, etc are not considered here.
2. Only those bills which have been introduced AND passed in both houses of Parliament have been considered here (only these constitute Acts – and become law of the land. Hence)

Between May 2014 and April 2017, there were 11 sessions of Parliament. In these sessions, the MHRD has introduced 11 bills in either house of Parliament. Out of these 11, 7 bills have been passed by the Lok Sabha, and 6 by the Rajya Sabha. In effect, 6 of these bills are Acts now. Let us look at some details of the bills passed in the below table.

As you can see,

• 3 out of the 6 bills are for creation of individual institutions. In fact, 2 out of these 3 were necessitated by the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh into Andhra and Telengana (Bills 6 and 7 in the table)
• 1 bill – the NEET one – was due to the time limitations in enforcing NEET exams in all states. Purpose was to ensure there is no situation of a violation of the NEET Act.
• 2 bills involved granting autonomous status to institutions (bills 1 and 3 in the list).
• In the calendar year 2015, which had 3 sessions of Parliament, no bill corresponding to the MHRD were introduced or passed.

I will leave it to the readers to adjudicate the performance of this *most* important ministry in the 3 years so far. However, it is important to highlight that there has been no significant piece of legislation enacted by the MHRD.

Just for comparison purpose, here is some data from the 1st 3 years of the UPA-1 Govt between 2004 and 2007.

• A total of 14 bills related to the MHRD were passed in the first 3 years of UPA-1
• There were at least 3 MAJOR bills passed in the first 3 years
  • The NCMEI Act, 2004 was passed in December, 2004 i.e. within a year of the formation of the Government.
  • The 93rd amendment was passed in December 2005.
  • The Central Education Institutions Bill was passed in 2006.
• The remaining bills set out to establish Univerisities and IITs in various parts of the country, such as the University of Allahabad Bill, the Manipal University Bill, Sikkim University Bill, Tripura University Bill and so on.

Disclaimer: Let there be no confusion whether I support the UPA’s actions in this ministry 🙂 The remainder of the posts in this blog vouch for my stance on that topic. However, the concern is that, just like the “Golden Hour” during medical emergencies, the “Golden Years” of this Government have been wasted in the #Core area.