India's Parliament Meets in Three Sessions a Year by Convention, While the Constitution Asks Only That No More Than Six Months Pass Between Sittings

The Constitution does not name a Budget, Monsoon or Winter Session. Article 85(1) says the President shall “from time to time” summon each House of Parliament, and that six months shall not intervene between the last sitting of one session and the first sitting of the next. By convention the year has three sessions, and the latest ran from a Winter Session on 1 to 19 December 2025, through a Budget Session of 28 January to 18 April 2026 with 31 sittings, to a Monsoon Session on 20 July to 13 August 2026.

Between and during those sittings, 24 department-related standing committees, each of 31 MPs, go through the ministries’ spending and Bills. This article walks through how the sessions and the committees fit together.

Who decides when Parliament meets

Under Article 85 the President summons the Houses and can end a session. PRS Legislative Research, an independent research group, described the practice in December 2020: the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs, then nine ministers, decides the dates, and the President formalises the decision, with MPs summoned in the President’s name.

On 18 May 1949 the Constituent Assembly debated the point, when the draft of this article (then Article 69) came up. H. V. Kamath and K. T. Shah argued for more frequent sessions, and Kamath moved to change “twice” a year to “thrice”. B. R. Ambedkar, who chaired the Drafting Committee, replied that “what we have provided is sufficient by way of a minimum”, that the maximum was left open, and that he feared members would “probably themselves get tired of the sessions”. The Assembly rejected both amendments and adopted the article. In 1951 the First Amendment replaced the article, and the text in force today sets no number of sessions. How the Assembly worked is in the constituent assembly at work.

Convention filled the gap. Budget Sessions start in late January and end by late April or early May with a recess in the middle, according to PRS; Monsoon Sessions run about three weeks from July to August; Winter Sessions about three weeks from November to December. A general scheme of sittings recommended by the Lok Sabha’s General Purposes Committee in 1955 was accepted by the government but never put into effect, PRS adds, and the calendar has bent when it had to. A two-day Monsoon Session in 2008 was extended to December after a no-confidence motion, so Parliament held two sessions that year, and the 2016 Budget Session was split in two.

Article 87 gives the first session of each year a fixed opening. At it the President addresses both Houses together, and each House then debates a Motion of Thanks on the address. In 2026 the address was on 28 January, and the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs reports that both Houses adopted the motions on 5 February.

The parliamentary year in numbers

Average annual sitting days by Lok Sabha term, in PRS’s count, run from 135 in the first to 66 in the 16th and 55 in the 17th. Between June 2019 and February 2024 the 17th Lok Sabha held 274 sittings, the fewest of any Lok Sabha that served a full five years. Several committees have recommended at least 120 sitting days a year, PRS noted in 2020.

Sessions in the latest year differ a good deal. In the Winter Session of 2025, which ran 15 days, PRS found the Lok Sabha working for 103% of its scheduled time and the Rajya Sabha for 104%. The Budget Session of 2026 was due to end on 2 April, was extended to take up delimitation-related Bills, and adjourned on 18 April after 31 sittings spread over 81 days. Its last week saw a Constitution amendment Bill voted down, covered in how the Constitution is amended. Productivity, by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs’ figures, was about 93% for the Lok Sabha and 110% for the Rajya Sabha. Measured against scheduled time, PRS gives 86% and 92%, so the two figures are not the same measure and should not be compared with each other.

In the Monsoon Session of 2026, which sat for 19 days, PRS reports that the Lok Sabha functioned for 15% of its scheduled time and the Rajya Sabha for 33%. Eleven Bills passed, and nine of them went through the Lok Sabha without any member other than the Minister speaking. Only one, the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026, got a full debate, nearly 11 hours with 48 Lok Sabha members taking part.

Adjourned, prorogued, dissolved

Three different words end three different things. A House is adjourned when its sitting stops, and “sine die”, Latin for “without a day”, means it stops with no date set to meet again. On 18 April 2026 both Houses adjourned sine die. Prorogation ends the session itself and is the President’s act under Article 85(2)(a). The Gazette of India Extraordinary of 20 April 2026 carried the Rajya Sabha Secretariat’s notice of the President’s order: “I hereby prorogue the Rajya Sabha.”

The two differ in what happens to pending Bills. Under Article 107(3), a Bill pending in Parliament does not lapse when the Houses are prorogued. A Bill pending in the Lok Sabha, or passed by it and pending in the Rajya Sabha, does lapse when the Lok Sabha is dissolved, says Article 107(5). Dissolution applies only to the Lok Sabha, which runs five years from its first meeting under Article 83(2). The Rajya Sabha is permanent, with about one-third of its members retiring every second year. Extensions of a year at a time during an Emergency are covered in the emergency provisions of the Constitution.

Between sessions the President can issue ordinances, which Article 123 permits when both Houses are not in session. An ordinance ceases to operate six weeks after Parliament reassembles unless both Houses disapprove it earlier.

How the Budget moves through its session

Each year the President must lay an “annual financial statement” before both Houses, under Article 112. The Union Budget for 2026-27 was presented on Sunday, 1 February 2026. A general discussion followed in both Houses, taking 12 hours 57 minutes in the Lok Sabha with 63 members speaking and 16 hours 30 minutes in the Rajya Sabha with 97.

Both Houses adjourned on 13 February and reassembled on 9 March. According to the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, this was done so the department-related standing committees could examine and report on the Demands for Grants, which are each ministry’s detailed spending estimates. On 18 March the Lok Sabha put the demands of the remaining ministries to the vote and passed the Appropriation (No.2) Bill the same day. No money can leave the Consolidated Fund of India, the government’s main account, except under a law of this kind, Article 114(3) says. On 25 March it passed the Finance Bill, which carries the tax changes.

PRS’s primer describes Appropriation and Finance Bills as Money Bills, on which the Rajya Sabha can only make recommendations. It has 14 days to return the Bill under Article 109, after which the Lok Sabha may accept or reject the recommendations. On 27 March, nine days after the Appropriation Bill passed the Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha returned both Bills.

Question Hour and Zero Hour

Asking questions is an “inherent and unfettered parliamentary right” of members, the Lok Sabha says, and it generally gives the first hour of a sitting to them. A member gives at least 15 clear days’ notice. The Secretariat holds separate ballots for starred questions, which a Minister answers aloud and which can draw follow-up questions, and unstarred questions, which get a written reply laid on the table of the House. Ministries are split into five groups, one for each weekday, so each group answers on a fixed day.

By PRS’s 2019 count, 20 starred questions are picked by ballot for a day in the Lok Sabha, up to 230 unstarred questions are listed, and usually five or six starred questions are reached within the hour. Whoever asked can put up to two supplementary questions, which are follow-ups on the answer.

Zero Hour is the hour after Question Hour, and PRS says that is its popular name. MPs give notice before 10 am to the Speaker on the day, and the Speaker decides whether the matter is raised. Papers such as CAG audit reports and committee reports are laid on the table at its start.

How much the hour depends on the House sitting showed in the Monsoon Session of 2026. PRS records that Question Hour ran for 1% of scheduled time in the Lok Sabha, about nine minutes in all, and 12% in the Rajya Sabha, and that of 380 questions listed for oral answer in the Lok Sabha, two were answered orally. That was the lowest Question Hour functioning since 2019, PRS noted. Answers to unstarred questions are deemed laid on the table of the House, so they do not depend on Question Hour running.

The 24 department-related standing committees

According to the Lok Sabha’s own page, 24 committees cover all ministries and departments, each with 31 members, 21 from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha, nominated by the Speaker and the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. Their term does not exceed one year, and a Minister cannot be a member. Eight are serviced by the Rajya Sabha Secretariat and 16 by the Lok Sabha Secretariat. Committees of this kind date to 1993, PRS says; before the restructuring of July 2004 each had up to 45 members.

Their jobs, as the Lok Sabha lists them, are to consider Demands for Grants, examine Bills the presiding officers refer to them, consider annual reports and consider long-term policy documents. They do not look at day-to-day administration. Rules 331C to 331Q of the Lok Sabha’s rules govern those the Lok Sabha services, and Rules 268 to 277 of the Rajya Sabha’s rules govern the rest. Referral is not automatic. Of Bills in the 17th Lok Sabha, 16% went to committees, against 28% in the 16th, and PRS puts the share in the 18th at 21% after the Monsoon Session of 2026.

PRS’s 2019 review gives a mixed record. In the 16th Lok Sabha the committees held 2,038 sittings and submitted 1,111 reports. MPs’ attendance at committee meetings was about 50%, against 84% in the House, and in 2018 the Agriculture committee’s report came eight days before the Demand for Grants was voted. In 2015 the Standing Committee on Railways called the practice of receiving government support and then paying a dividend back counter-productive, and the requirement to pay it was removed in September 2016.

The financial committees

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has 22 members, 15 from the Lok Sabha and 7 from the Rajya Sabha, elected for one year. It is the oldest parliamentary committee, the Comptroller and Auditor General’s office says, first constituted in 1921. It examines the appropriation accounts, the government’s yearly finance accounts and the CAG’s audit reports, and checks that money was spent for the purpose Parliament gave it. The CAG tables about 40 audit reports in a year and Parliament finds it hard to discuss each one, PRS notes, so the PAC is entrusted with their findings. From 2011-12 to 2018-19 it made an average of 180 recommendations a year, and the government accepted 80%, PRS found. Customarily, PRS wrote in 2011, an Opposition member chairs it.

The Estimates Committee has 30 Lok Sabha members and reports on economies and administrative reform. Public sector companies have their own Committee on Public Undertakings, of 22 members, 15 from the Lok Sabha and 7 from the Rajya Sabha.

Committees on a single Bill are ad hoc. Select and Joint Committees on Bills are the principal ones, the Lok Sabha says, and they cease to exist once they report. One such Joint Parliamentary Committee received the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026 during the Monsoon Session. The Joint Committee on the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 met 78 times over more than two years, PRS records.