Five months on, the Modi government is yet to call Parliament into session even as several legislatures across the world and some within the country have met during the pandemic; taking necessary precautions, using technology where possible and amending procedural laws to facilitate legislative oversight over governance.

Both Houses of Parliament were adjourned sine die on March 23 in view of the rising number of Covid-19 cases and have not met since then. Since the law mandates that the gap between two sessions cannot be longer than six months, the Centre is expected to announce a date for the next session soon.

India, meanwhile, is conspicuous by its absence in a compilation of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) — a global organisation of national parliaments — of parliamentary responses to the pandemic. The parliaments of most of the major democracies have already met during the pandemic; some with restricted attendance and others in a hybrid model of part-physical and part-online presence. Where necessary, procedures have been tweaked to allow for temporary changes in the format.

Both Houses of the US Congress resumed regular floor business in May, and they were in session together for the first time during the pandemic from June 25 with the larger House of Representatives also approving new rules for proxy voting and hearings by video conference.

“Across the pond”, in the UK, procedural changes to allow hybrid and virtual sitting of the House of Commons were unanimously approved by the House on April 21 and “meetings in both formats started on 22 April including a historic first Prime Minister question time’’, the IPU compilation said.

In Australia, both Houses sat from June 10 to 18, and are again meeting from Monday. “Pairing of government and Opposition members and senators (an unofficial arrangement) has been used to maintain the party composition of the Houses while fewer members and senators are present in the chambers during sittings,’’ the IPU said.

The German Bundestag, according to the Library of Congress, changed the rules of procedure to relax quorum requirements and allow remote participation in some cases so that Parliament remained functional through the pandemic.

The French Senate reduced the number of plenary sittings — one per week with only 10 questions to the government, with only the authors of the questions and heads of parties present. The National Assembly also reduced its number of sittings and held meetings remotely.

Brazil passed a new resolution which enables its Parliament to work remotely during a public health emergency using video-conferencing and virtual management tools. The system allows MPs to register to a session and shows all phases of the legislative process including the bill under discussion, amendments, the results of each voting round, speeches, and committee agendas.

Even Afghanistan, with its fledgling democracy, convened meetings of the Wolesi Jirga (House of the People) with restrictions; confining the sessions to pandemic-related discussions and scrutinising the government’s actions.

Nothing in the Indian Constitution bars the government from making arrangements for hybrid meetings but the efforts here have been to have a physical session only with provision for all members to be present on the premises of Parliament.

As of now, the plan is to spread the members of the two Houses over the two chambers in turns which again technically brings in the hybrid mode as participation of a Lok Sabha MP sitting in the Rajya Sabha will be through a special console provided for audio-visual communication.

According to Article 85(1) of the Constitution, the President summons each House of Parliament to “meet at such time and place as he thinks fit’’, but six months shall not intervene between its last sitting in one session and the date appointed for its first sitting in the next session.