Sixty years of Parliament – Time for Introspection.

The parliament house originally known as 'Council House’, was planned at the introductory stage to be a part of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. But in 1919 according to the Montague-Chelmsford reforms, it was announced to be designed as the Indian parliament. Various designs of the building were planned from a triangular to a Roman colosseum like structure and which paved way for its present circular designed colonnaded verandah, with 144 pillars and 560 feet diameter. The foundation stone of the council House was laid on February 12, 1921 by the Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, third son of Queen Victoria. The building in pale and red Dholpur sandstone, used the same theme as neighbouring Secretariat Building. The building spread over nearly six acres was inaugurated on January 18, 1927 by then Governor-General of India, Lord Irwin. It is now commonly known as Sansad Bhavan.

General elections to the first Lok Sabha since independence were held in India were held between 25 October 1951 and 21 February 1952. The Indian National Congress (INC) stormed into power with 364 of the 489 seat. With this, India's grand old party managed to secure 45 per cent of the total votes polled. An electoral participation of 44.87 per cent was reported across the country. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru became the first elected Prime Minister of the country, his party winning 44.99% (47,665,875) of the votes cast. Voter turnout was 45.7%. The first votes of this election were cast in the tehsil of Chini in Himachal Pradesh on 25 October 1951.

The Council of States (Rajya Sabha) met for the first time on 13 May 1952. The Council of States named as Rajya Sabha in Hindi on 23 August 1954. The Chairman, Rajya Sabha made an announcement in the House that the Council of States would now be called ‘Rajya Sabha’ in Hindi. The first Chairman of Rajya Sabha was Dr. S. Radhakrishnan. He was the only Chairman to have two terms (13.5.1952-12.5.1962).

But the observation of Sixty Years of Parliament is also a time for introspection. Criminalisation and corruption are two main cause of concern apart from Communalism and Casteism. The number of criminal-turned-Members of Parliament has increased from 128 to 150, when compared to the 2004 elections. A study conducted by the National Election Watch suggests that out of those 150 MPs, 73 have serious charges levelled against them. According to the report, there has been an increase of 17.2 per cent in terms of criminal candidates when compared to 2004 results. The Bharatiya Janata Party tops the list of criminal candidates with 42. The Congress is a close second with 41 tainted candidates. Among the states Uttar Pradesh tops the list with 31 criminal candidates of which 22 have serious charges. Maharashtra comes second among the states with 23 candidates with criminal charges. In the then Lok Sabha Jagadish Sharma of Janata Dal- United elected from the Jahanabad constituency toped the list. He was an accused in 6 cases and there are 17 serious counts under the Indian Penal Code booked against him. As of December 2008, 120 of India's 523 parliament members were facing criminal charges. Many of the biggest scandals since 2010 have involved very high levels of government, including Cabinet Ministers and Chief Ministers, such as in the 2G spectrum scam, the 2010 Commonwealth Games scam and the Adarsh Housing Society scam, mining scandal in Karnataka and cash for vote scam.

The Vohra Report, submitted by the former Indian Union Home Secretary, N.N. Vohra, in October 1993, studied the problem of the criminalisation of politics and of the nexus among criminals, politicians and bureaucrats in India. The report contained several observations made by official agencies on the criminal network which was virtually running a parallel government. It also discussed criminal gangs who enjoyed the patronage of politicians — of all political parties — and the protection of government functionaries. It revealed that political leaders had become the leaders of gangs. Over the years criminals had been elected to local bodies, State Assemblies, and even the Parliament. The unpublished annexures to the Vohra Report are believed to contain highly explosive material.

As far corruption is concerned black money is the main problem. Black money refers to money removed from the official economy (via corruption, bribery, tax evasion, etc.) and stored outside of the country. A November 2010 report from the Washington-based Global Financial Integrity estimates that India lost at least US$462 billion in illicit financial flows, another word for black money, from 1948 through 2008. The report also estimated the size of India's underground economy at approximately US$640 billion at the end of 2008 or roughly 50% of the nation's GDP. According to a 2010 The Hindu article, unofficial estimates indicate that Indians had over US$1456 billion in black money stored in Swiss banks (approximately USD 1.4 trillion).While some news reports claimed that data provided by the Swiss Banking Association Report (2006) showed India has more black money than the rest of the world combined. A more recent report quoted the SBA's Head of International Communications as saying that no such official statistics exist. Another report said that Indian-owned Swiss bank account assets are worth 13 times the country’s national debt. The current investigation is undertaken by the Income Tax Department.