Article 123 of the Indian Constitution grants the President of India certain Law making power i.e. to Promulgate Ordinances when either of the two Houses of the Parliament is not in session which makes it impossible for a single House to pass and enact a law. Ordinance route can be employed When legislature is not in session Or Immediate action is needed.

Deadlock in parliament has been increasing every year due to following reasons :

• Manifestation of the tit-for-tat tactics : the political class has employed over the years. blowback from the politics of confrontation that the Bharatiya Janata Party pursued during the years of the United Progressive Alliance rule.
• Controlled by the ruling party : Parliament is supposed to keep a watch on the government, point to its acts of omission and commission, yet it is, in reality, controlled by the ruling party. It is the governing party which determines when Parliament should meet and what its agenda will be.
• Means to acquire power and wealth : Members seldom seem to value the immense faith the ordinary voters have reposed in them. It is common for members to view their job as a means to acquire power and wealth. According to a report published in Live Mint in May, 2014, “The average wealth of MPs has grown faster over the past five years even as the economy has slowed.
• Criminal background : every third of the newly-elected member of Lok Sabha has a criminal background. This is reflective of the growing indifference and contempt of successive generations of parliamentarians for the institutions of Parliament.
• Decline of Parliament authority : The gradual decline of Parliament and attenuation of parliamentary authority is also attributed to frequent absenteeism, deterioration in the conduct and quality of Members, poor levels of participation, and the falling standards of debates and legislative business.
• Disruptions in the name of Dissent :Disruption a critical component of any democracy and, in that light, disruptions could be seen as a part of established parliamentary practice. it becomes a cause for concern when disruptions become the norm, rather than the exception. Frequent parliamentary disruptions mean low number of sittings leading to a decline in legislative activity, budgets getting passed without discussion, urgent bills getting stalled at either of the houses resulting in loss of sitting days and productive business of Parliament.

There has been increasing tendency of the union government to promulgate legislation through ordinances due to above mentioned reasons of logjam,however the idea of ordinance has to be limited for the following reasons :

• Exception: In a parliamentary democracy such as India, the ordinance promulgation power is supposed to be used as an exception and not as a matter of course.
• Knee jerk response :Sometimes ordinance are seen as knee jerk response to protest and criticism as seen in recent criminal law amendment ordinance – 2018 : death penalty for sexual assault on minor girls below 12 as response to kathua rape incident.
• Spirit of parliamentary democracy : An ordinance becomes the dominant form of law making and is used on a whim by the President or the governor (acting on the advice of the government), this has implications for the future of parliamentary democracy.
• Stability and consistency : The overuse of ordinances goes fundamentally against two core tenets of the rule of law, stability and consistency If the purpose of ordinances is to genuinely make “law”— norms and procedures capable of being followed and creating rights and duties— then such a purpose is entirely defeated if there is uncertainty about what the law is going to be in a few months. If the ordinances recently promulgated by the union government were done in good faith, and if the intent was genuinely to reform the laws as they stand, then taking the ordinance route was perhaps the worst possible course of action.
• Suspicions about the government’s motives :Taking the ordinance route may only raise suspicions about the government’s motives and harden the opposition’s stand towards a measure, as was seen with the proposed amendments to the land acquisition law.
• Parliamentary scrutiny : If there is broad consensus that a certain legislative measure is needed, parliamentary scrutiny is valuable in and of itself. Reference to the standing committee and open debate about the merits of a bill and its drafting are likely to address shortcomings or oversights in the law.

It is necessary to limit the exercise of the power of ordinance through following reforms :

• Convening of Parliament on demand for MPs : In India, Parliament is convened by the President on the advice of the government, subject to the condition that it should meet once every six months. Experts on legislatures suggest a provision should be introduced in the Constitution that makes it mandatory for the convening of Parliament should a certain number of MPs demand it.Ex : pakistan’s Constitution has a provision which makes it incumbent upon the Speaker to convene the National Assembly, its popular House, within 14 days of one-fourth of its members requisitioning it.
• Round-the-year parliament : Have Parliament meet round-the-year, Monday to Friday, instead of the three sessions for which it meets, as is the current practice. Episodic meetings are bound to create episodes, so to speak say, discussing a railway accident. It is this divergence of views which lead to deadlocks.In Britain The Speaker lays out the entire annual calendar as soon as a new government is formed, marking the periods of recesses, the hours of meetings on every day of the week, and on which day the Opposition gets the preference to raise issues.
• The power to make an ordinance is to meet an extraordinary situation and it should not be made to meet political ends of an individual. Though it is contrary to democratic norm for an executive to make a law but this power is given to the President to meet emergencies so it should be limited in some point of time as pronounced in the case of D.C. Wadhwa v. State of Bihar.
• There is need of clarity on the nature and extent of the judicial review of the court over the ordinances made by the President or the Governor as various judgements of honourable court on ordinance in inconsistent.

Conclusion :

In most of the cases Power of Ordinance making is a controversial topic and a topic of discussion. It tries to disturb the balance between the executive as well as legislative powers by bringing into the element of arbitrariness into the Constitutional System and disturbing the rule of law. Whenever such an ordinance making power is exercised by an Executive body it shows disregard to the legislature. Till now only a few grounds are established to challenge the validity of the Ordinances which directly violates a constitutional provision of separation of power by giving president exceeding constitutional power.