MLC election results are out. WTF is MLC!

The latest Vidhan Parishad results have landed and everybody is discussing them as if they matter. That's the magic. Karnataka's ruling Congress drew a blank while the BJP-JD(S) alliance swept all four seats. Bihar produced the better farce: Jan Suraaj opened its account, the RJD unseated a five-term BJP veteran, and Independents won two. Uttar Pradesh saw the BJP edge the Samajwadi Party amid graduate turnout around 41%, though the SP held the edge in Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's constituency. Maharashtra's preferential counts continued their slow quarrel between Mahayuti and MVA. All this was in the news all day yesterday. One wonders why.Every state has a Vidhan Sabha, or Legislative Assembly, elected by the people of the state. That is a vital organ of democracy. What on earth is this Vidhan Parishad or Legislative Council?Well, the Legislative Council is the appendix of Indian democracy. Nobody knows what it does, everyone pays for it, and it makes news only when elections are due. Whenever someone mentions MLC, we think of a Medico-Legal Case and not a Member of Legislative Council because we have more of the former and have never seen the latter.Six states still keep one, like that relative who refuses to sell the ancestral kothi in Simultala even though the only permanent resident is a caretaker. Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana cling to theirs. The remaining 22 states somehow manage to pass appropriately damaging laws, fight caste wars, and stage noisy walkouts with just one House. The Republic has not collapsed. Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Punjab abolished theirs decades ago. Assam ditched its even earlier. Nobody misses the relic in those states.This is how this relic is assembled. One-third of the members are chosen by MLAs, which is to say the same people who won an election select members of the neighbouring house. One-sixth are nominated by the Governor, meaning whoever the Governor has been instructed to accommodate in that season. The rest come from local bodies, teachers and graduates. Graduates. In 2026, when a Bachelors degree can't get you in on the job market and out of bachelorhood, Bihar's graduate electorate was so stirred by this sacred privilege that barely half of those registered bothered to turn up. Teachers did a bit better. The rest treated it like an optional paper in a subject nobody studies anymore.So what does the Council do? Well, in short: "kripya pratiksha karein." It can delay an ordinary bill for a few months and a money bill for 14 days. That is the full extent of its constitutional muscle. It cannot force a joint sitting. It cannot even pretend to be a check on the executive the way its defenders claim. Everything else is theatre. Bills that matter eventually pass anyway, often with the same parties voting the same way in both Houses.The permanent nature of the body, with one-third of members retiring every two years on six-year terms, only prolongs the farce. It cannot be dissolved, so the patronage machine keeps running even when the Assembly changes hands. The actual representative body gets dissolved. The pretenders are perpetual.Its real function is being the back door. Chief ministers walk in through it when the front door of the Assembly looks too crowded with voters, or when a by-election would be inconvenient, or when a defeated loyalist needs parking.Akhilesh Yadav ran Uttar Pradesh as an MLC. Yogi Adityanath did the same until 2022. Uddhav Thackeray got himself elected unopposed in 2020, so the chair would not become vacant. Nitish Kumar spent so much of his long chief ministership inside Bihar's Council that renaming it Nitish Niwas would only be accurate. He last faced a direct Assembly election in 1985, preferred the Council route for decades, and defended the choice by calling the Upper House "a respectable institution." Respectable enough, apparently, that his son Nishant was later elected unopposed to it. When Nitish finally moved to the Rajya Sabha in 2026, he resigned from the Council only because the rules force a choice; the Council had already served its purpose.When a Council develops the temerity to disagree, the government simply reaches for the off switch. NT Rama Rao abolished Andhra's in 1985 after the Congress-dominated Council blocked his legislation; he called it an unproductive burden and a parking lot for out-of-work politicians. YS Rajasekhara Reddy revived it in 2007. When it irritated his son, Jagan Mohan Reddy, over his three-capitals plan in 2020, the Assembly voted to kill it again. Death, rebirth, death, cancelled. Shyam Singha Roy dies, is reborn. Telangana inherited one at bifurcation and has kept the heirloom. Karnataka's version enjoyed its finest hour in 2020, when members dragged the deputy chairman off his chair. Finally, a debate with physical weight behind it. Elsewhere, parties that rail against the Council in one state quietly support it in another when the seats are useful for managing factions or accommodating allies.All of this is funded by you. Salaries, pensions, official cars, personal staff, canteens and the usual permanent establishment, paid by you for a revising chamber that revises nothing and a house of elders run by the same parties that already control the Assembly. Strength is capped at one-third of the Assembly and must be at least 40 members, which only guarantees a floor of waste. It is a second opinion that nobody seeks and nobody heeds, a cheque that always clears because the drawer and the payee are the same people.The graduates and teachers constituencies, once sold as a way to bring expertise into legislation, have become closed shops for organised groups and low-turnout patronage. In an age of mass higher education and digital access, the idea that a three-year degree or a teaching certificate confers special wisdom on legislation is an anachronism that even the graduates themselves seem unwilling to defend at the polling booth.Vidhan Sabha zindabad. Vidhan Parishad? Zinda hai. Bas. And that is the problem. It survives not because anyone needs it, but because it is convenient for those who already have power. They. And expensive for those who do not. You. But six states will continue this drama because the politicians get to play while it is you, the taxpayer, pay. If 22 states of the Union can do without it, the rest six can do it too. Will they?- Ends(Views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication)