Unit 4

List of Various Devices of Parliamentary Proceedings

in India
Legislative bodies in India, including the Parliament and the State Legislatures,
employ various devices to run their parliamentary proceedings. Key devices of
parliamentary proceedings used in India are discussed in detail as follows.

Question Hour
● Question Hour is a scheduled period where Members of Parliament (MPs)
have the opportunity to ask questions to ministers regarding various matters of
public interest during a parliamentary session.
● This period usually occurs at the first hour of every sitting in both the Lok
Sabha (Lower House) and the Rajya Sabha (Upper House) of the Indian
Parliament.
● The different types of questions asked to ministers during the Question Hour are
as follows:
Starred Questions
● These questions require oral answers from the ministers.
● MPs who submit starred questions are allowed to ask supplementary
questions.
● These are printed in green color.
Unstarred Questions
● These questions require written answers from the ministers.
● MPs who submit unstarred questions do not have the opportunity to ask
supplementary questions.
● These are printed in white color.
Short Notice Questions

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 ● These questions can be asked by giving a notice of less than 10 days.
● They are answered orally.
● These are printed in light pink color.
● In addition to ministers, questions can also be asked to private members
regarding some matters related to them.
○ These questions are printed in yellow color.

Zero Hour
● It refers to a scheduled period that starts immediately after the Question Hour
and lasts until the agenda or the regular business for the day is taken up.
● It is used to raise matters without prior notice.
● It is not mentioned in the Rules of Procedure. Thus, it is an informal device.
● It is an Indian innovation in the field of parliamentary proceedings.

Motions
● A Motion refers to a formal proposal made by a member of the legislature to
initiate discussion on a matter of general public importance.
● It can be moved either by ministers or private members.
● No discussion on such a matter can take place except on a motion made with
the consent of the presiding officer.
● The House expresses its decisions or opinions on such issues through the
adoption or rejection of motions.
● The motions moved by the members fall into three principal categories:
Substantive Motion
It is a self-contained independent proposal that deals with very important matters
such as the impeachment of the President.
Substitute Motion
● It refers to a motion that is moved in substitution of an original motion and
proposes an alternative to it.

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 ● If a Substitute Motion is adopted by the House, it supersedes the original
motion.
Subsidiary Motion
● It refers to a motion which in itself has no meaning and cannot state the
decision of the House without reference to the original motion or proceedings of
the House.
● There are three subcategories of Subsidiary Motions:
Ancillary Motion
● It is used as the regular way of proceeding with various kinds of business.
Superseding Motion
● It is moved in the course of a debate on another issue and seeks to
supersede that issue.
Amendment Motion
● It seeks to modify or substitute only a part of the original motion.
○ Some special types of motions are discussed below in detail.
Closure Motion
● It is a motion moved by a member to cut short the debate on a matter before
the House. If the motion is approved by the House, the debate is stopped and
the matter is put to vote.
● There are four kinds of closure motions:
Simple Closure
● It states that the ‘matter, having been sufficiently discussed, be now put to
vote’.
Closure by Compartments
● In this case, the clauses of a bill or resolutions are grouped into parts before
the commencement of the debate.
● The debate, then, covers the part as a whole and the entire part is put to
vote.
Kangaroo Closure

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 ● Under this type, only important clauses are taken up for debate and voting
and the intervening clauses are skipped over and taken as passed.
Guillotine Closure
● This is one when the undiscussed clauses of a bill or a resolution are also
put to vote along with the discussed ones due to paucity of time.
Privilege Motion
● It is moved by a member when he feels that a minister has committed a
breach of the privilege of the house or its members by withholding facts or by
giving wrong facts.
● Its purpose is to censure the concerned minister.
Calling Attention Motion
● This motion is used by a member to call the attention of a minister to a matter
of urgent public importance and seek an authoritative statement from him
thereupon.
● Like Zero Hour, it is also an Indian innovation in the parliamentary procedure.
● However, unlike Zero Hour, it is mentioned in the Rules of Procedure.
Adjournment Motion
● It is introduced in the Parliament to draw the attention of the House to a
definite matter of urgent public importance.
● It needs the support of at least 50 members to be admitted.
● It interrupts the normal business of the House. Thus, it is an extraordinary
device.
● It involves an element of censure against the government and hence Rajya
Sabha is not permitted to make use of this device.
● The discussion on an adjournment motion should not be less than two hours
and thirty minutes.
● This motion is subject to the following restrictions:
○ It should raise a matter that is definite, factual, urgent, and of public
importance.

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 ○ It should not cover more than one matter.
○ It should be restricted to a specific matter of recent occurrence.
○ It should not be framed in general terms.
○ It should not raise a question of privilege.
○ It should not revive discussion on a matter that has been discussed in
the same session.
○ It should not deal with any matter that is under adjudication by the
court.
○ It should not raise any questions that can be raised separately
through distinct motions.
No-Confidence Motion
● This is a motion moved by a member to express a lack of confidence of the
Lok Sabha in the government.
○ This motion is moved in accordance with the provisions under Article 75,
which says that the Council of Ministers shall be collectively
responsible to the Lok Sabha. It means that the Government stays in
office only as long as it enjoys the confidence of the majority of the
members of Lok Sabha.
● It can be moved only in the Lok Sabha.
● It needs the support of 50 members to be admitted.
● The motion, if allowed by the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, is debated upon and
then put to vote. If it gets passed by the House by a Simple Majority, the
government has to resign.
Censure Motion
● This motion is moved to seek the disapproval of certain policies of the
government.
● It seeks to censure the government for its ‘lapses’.
● It can be moved only in the Lok Sabha and not in the Rajya Sabha.

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 ● The difference between a Censure Motion differs from a No-Confidence Motion
can be seen as follows:

Censure Motion No-Confidence Motion

It should state the reasons for its It need not state the reasons for its
adoption. adoption.

It can be moved against an individual It can be moved against the entire

minister, a group of ministers, or the Council of Ministers only.
entire Council of Ministers.

It is moved for censuring the Council of It is moved to ascertain the confidence

Ministers for specific policies and of the Lok Sabha in the Council of
actions. Ministers.

If it is passed in the Lok Sabha, the If it is passed in the Lok Sabha, the
Council of Ministers need not resign Council of Ministers must resign from
from office. office.

Motion of Thanks
● The first session after each general election and the first session of every
fiscal year is addressed by the president, wherein the president outlines the
policies and programs of the government in the preceding year and ensuing year.
This address of the president is discussed in both the Houses of Parliament
on a motion called the ‘Motion of Thanks’.
● At the end of the discussion, the motion is put to vote.
● This motion must be passed in the House. Otherwise, it amounts to the defeat
of the government.
No-Day-Yet-Named Motion

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 ● It refers to a motion that has been admitted by the Speaker but no date has
been fixed for its discussion.
● The Speaker, in consultation with the leader of the House or on the
recommendation of the Business Advisory Committee, allots time for the
discussion of such a motion