Parliament of India: Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha for UPSC

By Dooit UPSC expert · 22 July 2026 · 13 min read

The Parliament of India is the supreme legislative organ of the Union. Under Article 79, it consists of the President and two Houses — the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) and the Lok Sabha (House of the People). The Lok Sabha is the directly elected lower House with a five-year term; the Rajya Sabha is an indirectly elected permanent body that is never dissolved. Parliament makes laws, controls the national purse, holds the government accountable, and amends the Constitution — and for UPSC it is the densest scoring chapter in Polity, tested through exact numbers, article references and the fine print of the money-bill and joint-sitting provisions.

In three decades of teaching Polity I have seen aspirants lose more marks on Parliament than on any other single chapter — not because it is hard, but because it is deceptively factual. They read it like a story about debates and walkouts, when the examiner reads it like an accountant. How many members can a state send to the Rajya Sabha? Who certifies a money bill? How many joint sittings has India ever seen? These are not opinions; they are values, and Prelims either credits you with the exact one or it does not. So let us treat this chapter the way I treat it on the board — build the House brick by brick, fix every number, and understand why each rule exists before you memorise it.

The composition of Parliament of India

Begin with the frame. Article 79 says Parliament comprises the President and the two Houses. Notice at once that the President is a part of Parliament without being a member of either House — the same point I stress in our detailed guide to the powers and election of the President of India. No bill becomes law without the President's assent, so the head of the executive is woven into the legislature by design. That single line, "the President is part of the Union legislature," is true, and UPSC has tested it more than once.

The two Houses are built on opposite principles. The Lok Sabha represents the people directly; the Rajya Sabha represents the states in a federal chamber. Get their strengths exact, because this is prime Prelims territory.

A few of these deserve a second look because they carry marks on their own. The Lok Sabha's 2 nominated Anglo-Indian seats under Article 331 were abolished by the 104th Amendment Act, 2019, and the provision lapsed on 25 January 2020. If a statement today still credits the President with nominating Anglo-Indians, it is false — a classic "is this currently correct?" trap. The Rajya Sabha's 12 nominated members are chosen by the President for special knowledge in literature, science, art and social service — and, unlike the presidential electoral college, these nominated members do vote in the election of the Vice-President.

Why the Rajya Sabha is a permanent House

Students often ask how a member can have a six-year term while one-third of the House retires every two years. The answer is in Article 83: "The Council of States shall not be subject to dissolution, but as nearly as possible one-third of the members thereof shall retire as soon as may be on the expiration of every second year." The House itself is continuous — it is never dissolved — but its membership is staggered so that fresh elections happen in rotation. This continuity is deliberate. When the Lok Sabha is dissolved, the Rajya Sabha carries the institutional memory of Parliament forward, and it can even hold a special sitting to legislate in an emergency when the lower House does not exist. The Lok Sabha's normal term of five years can be extended during a National Emergency, but only one year at a time, and the extension cannot continue beyond six months after the Emergency ends.

How a bill becomes an Act

The legislative process is where the two Houses meet, and where UPSC hides its sharpest distinctions. Every ordinary bill must be passed by both Houses and then receive the President's assent. But what happens when the Houses disagree? That is the story of Article 108.

A joint sitting under Article 108 is summoned by the President in three situations: the second House rejects the bill, the Houses finally disagree on the amendments, or more than six months pass without the second House passing it. The Speaker of the Lok Sabha presides over a joint sitting — not the Vice-President — and the matter is decided by a simple majority of members present and voting. Because the Lok Sabha is much larger, its will usually carries. Two exclusions are heavily tested: joint sittings do not apply to money bills (the Rajya Sabha has no power to block them anyway) or to Constitution Amendment Bills (each House must pass those separately by special majority, as explained in our guide to the constitutional amendment process under Article 368). India has held only three joint sittings — for the Dowry Prohibition Bill (1961), the Banking Service Commission (Repeal) Bill (1978), and the Prevention of Terrorism Bill / POTA (2002).

Money bills and financial control (Article 110)

Nothing separates the two Houses more sharply than money. A money bill, defined in Article 110, deals only with taxation, borrowing, the Consolidated Fund or Contingency Fund of India, and related financial matters. Fix these rules exactly, because they are among the most reliably tested facts in the whole syllabus.

• A money bill can be introduced only in the Lok Sabha, and only on the President's recommendation.
• The Speaker of the Lok Sabha certifies whether a bill is a money bill, and the Speaker's decision is final — it cannot be questioned in any court or in either House.
• The Rajya Sabha cannot reject or amend a money bill. It can only make recommendations within 14 days, which the Lok Sabha is free to accept or reject. If the Rajya Sabha does nothing within 14 days, the bill is deemed passed.

Here is the distinction that trips up half the exam hall: a money bill is not the same as a financial bill. Every money bill is a financial bill, but not every financial bill is a money bill. A financial bill that contains taxation or spending provisions alongside other matters (Financial Bill Category I) is passed like an ordinary bill — the Rajya Sabha has full power over it — but it can only be introduced in the Lok Sabha on the President's recommendation. Only a bill that deals exclusively with the Article 110 matters, and is so certified by the Speaker, is a true money bill. When a question turns on whether the Rajya Sabha can amend a bill, this is the hinge.

Powers exclusive to each House

Aspirants assume the Lok Sabha is simply the stronger House. It is, on money and on the survival of the government — but the Rajya Sabha holds two powers the Lok Sabha can never exercise. Keep this comparison at your fingertips.

Both powers of the Rajya Sabha flow from its character as the House of the states — only a chamber representing the states can permit the Union to trespass into the State List or to bind the states to a new central service. Each Article 249 or Article 312 resolution needs a special majority (two-thirds of members present and voting) and, for Article 249, remains in force for one year at a time.

Sessions, sittings and the devices of accountability

Parliament does its holding-to-account work through a rhythm of sessions and a toolkit of procedural devices. The President summons each House, and Article 85 fixes the outer limit: the gap between two sessions cannot exceed six months, so Parliament must meet at least twice a year. In practice there are three sessions — Budget (February to May), Monsoon (July to September) and Winter (November to December). The quorum to conduct business is one-tenth of the total membership of the House (Article 100).

The instruments an MP uses to pin down the executive are exactly what Mains rewards you for naming precisely:

• Question Hour — the first hour of a sitting, when ministers answer starred (oral), unstarred (written) and short-notice questions.
• Zero Hour — an Indian innovation, not mentioned in the Constitution or the rules, that follows Question Hour and lets members raise urgent matters without notice.
• Motions — the adjournment motion (to discuss a recent matter of urgent public importance, involving an element of censure), the no-confidence motion (which can bring down the government), the censure motion, and the calling-attention motion.
• Parliamentary committees — the workhorses of scrutiny: the Public Accounts Committee, the Estimates Committee, the Committee on Public Undertakings, and the Departmentally Related Standing Committees that examine bills and budgets away from the noise of the floor.

One more device closes the loop between the two Houses and the members themselves: disqualification. A member who defects can lose the seat under the Tenth Schedule — the subject of our post on the anti-defection law and the Tenth Schedule — and the presiding officer of the House decides such cases. Reading Parliament alongside anti-defection shows you how the institution polices its own membership.

How UPSC actually tests the Parliament of India

Let me be concrete, because that is what you came for. In Prelims, expect surgical factual checks: the maximum strength of each House (552 and 250), the present strength (543 and 245), the manner of Rajya Sabha election (elected MLAs, STV), the certifying authority for a money bill (the Speaker), the 14-day window for Rajya Sabha recommendations, the number of joint sittings held (three), the quorum (one-tenth), and the two exclusive powers of the Rajya Sabha (Articles 249 and 312). The abolition of Anglo-Indian nomination in 2020 is the perennial "currently correct?" trap.

In Mains (GS Paper 2), Parliament appears as an analytical prompt — the decline of parliamentary scrutiny, the misuse of the money-bill route to bypass the Rajya Sabha, the fall in the number of sittings, or the case for stronger committees. The winning structure is to state the constitutional position crisply, bring in a concrete instance or data point, and close with a balanced reform view. If you are building this chapter from scratch, slot it into the sequence laid out in our UPSC Polity preparation strategy so it connects to the President, the amendment process and the federal scheme rather than sitting as an isolated list of numbers.

The bigger picture to carry into the hall

Read as one argument, the Parliament of India is the meeting point of two ideas the Constitution refuses to choose between — the sovereignty of the people, expressed through the directly elected Lok Sabha, and the federal balance of the Union, guarded by the state-representing Rajya Sabha. The lower House can make and unmake governments and command the purse; the upper House cannot be dissolved and speaks for the states. Neither is supreme alone, and the whole machinery of joint sittings, money-bill certification and exclusive powers exists to manage the friction between them. When you can explain that tension in your own words — why a bill on a State List subject needs the Rajya Sabha's nod, why a money bill does not — you have stopped memorising Parliament and started understanding it, which is exactly the level at which Mains and the interview reward you.