Legislative output, how many bills a government gets passed and how thoroughly Parliament examines them, is one of the more measurable indicators of a government’s functioning. This article compiles the data across Modi’s three Lok Sabha terms.
The 16th Lok Sabha (2014-2019)
According to PRS Legislative Research’s overview, the 16th Lok Sabha passed 133 bills, a 15 percent increase over the previous term’s output. However, only about 25 percent of these bills were referred to parliamentary committees for detailed examination before passage, a sharp drop from 71 percent in the preceding 15th Lok Sabha and 60 percent in the one before that. The House sat for 1,615 hours during this term, roughly 40 percent below the historical full-term average, and 45 ordinances, temporary laws issued when Parliament isn’t in session, were promulgated during this period.
The 17th Lok Sabha (2019-2024)
The 17th Lok Sabha passed 222 bills in total, or 179 excluding routine Finance and Appropriation bills, according to PRS’s methodology, across 274 sittings and 1,354 hours, a session productivity rate PRS described as “the highest among the last five Lok Sabhas.” Despite this higher productivity, committee scrutiny fell further still, with only 16 percent of bills referred to committees, and 58 percent of bills passed within two weeks of being introduced. PRS’s analysis specifically noted that 35 percent of bills received under one hour of discussion before passage.
The 18th Lok Sabha (2024-Present)
Through the Monsoon Session of 2026, the 18th Lok Sabha had introduced 64 bills, with 34 of them, or 53 percent, passed in the same session they were introduced, according to PRS data reported by Business Standard, a sharp increase from 33 percent in the 16th Lok Sabha and 62 percent in the 17th. Session-by-session, the Monsoon Session 2026 alone saw 12 bills introduced and 11 passed in that same session, continuing a trend of increasingly rapid passage.
How This Compares to the UPA Years
The 15th Lok Sabha, spanning the UPA-II government from 2009 to 2014, introduced 222 bills and passed 165, with 71 percent referred to committees for scrutiny, according to Wikipedia’s compiled Lok Sabha records sourced to official data. The steady decline in committee referral rates since then, from 71 percent to 25 percent to 16 percent across the three subsequent terms, is one of the most consistently cited data points by PRS Legislative Research in its assessments of how legislative scrutiny has changed over this decade. On ordinances specifically, The Wire’s reporting found the Modi government promulgated 76 ordinances in its first seven years, compared to the UPA’s 61 across its full ten years in office.
Landmark Legislation Passed
Several major pieces of legislation stand out across this decade: the GST-related bills passed in 2016 and 2017, implemented from July 1, 2017; the criminalisation of instant triple talaq in July 2019; the Article 370 revocation and Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act in August 2019; the Citizenship Amendment Act in December 2019; the three farm laws passed in September 2020 and repealed in November 2021 following sustained farmer protests, covered in detail in our separate articles on both; the Women’s Reservation Bill in September 2023; and three new criminal codes, replacing the colonial-era Indian Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure, and Evidence Act, passed in December 2023.
The Criticism Around Scrutiny
The declining committee-referral trend has drawn sustained criticism. Newslaundry’s analysis of the 18th Lok Sabha found that 29 of 46 bills examined passed after under an hour of discussion in at least one House, with one bill, the MSME Development Amendment Bill of 2026, passed in just three minutes, and nine bills in the 2026 Monsoon Session passing with no Member of Parliament speaking except the minister introducing it. The median discussion time per bill fell from just under six hours in 2024 to under two and a half hours by 2026, according to the same analysis, with zero bills referred to committee during the entire Monsoon Session 2026, compared to seven the year before.
Session Productivity Has Also Swung Sharply
Overall parliamentary productivity, a measure of how much of scheduled sitting time is actually used for business rather than lost to disruptions, has been notably volatile. Lok Sabha hit 95 percent productivity in 2024 before falling to 29 percent in 2025, then rebounding to 93 percent in the 2026 Budget Session, according to PRS’s session tracking. The Monsoon Session 2026 saw productivity drop to just 15 percent in the Lok Sabha, described by Outlook India as the lowest since the Winter Session of 2016, with Question Hour running only nine minutes and just two of 380 submitted questions answered orally.
Bottom Line
Parliament under Modi has passed a growing raw number of bills across successive terms, but the share of bills receiving detailed committee scrutiny has fallen sharply, from 71 percent under the previous UPA government to just 16 percent in the most recent full term, a trend that independent legislative researchers including PRS have consistently flagged as a meaningful shift in how thoroughly new laws are examined before passage.
Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available PRS Legislative Research data and news reports listed below. It is written for general informational purposes and does not represent an official statement from the Government of India or the Parliament of India.
Sources
FAQ
