Kaustuv Bagchi

What they do

• Debating and voting on state bills and laws in the Legislative Assembly, and proposing amendments.
• The subjects a state can legislate on - the State List and the shared Concurrent List - e.g. police and public order, prisons, public health and hospitals, school education, agriculture and land, water, local government, and roads and buildings, plus state taxes (on Concurrent subjects like education, a central law wins if the two clash).
• Passing the state budget and approving how the state taxes and spends public money (money bills start in the Assembly).
• Deciding who governs the state - the Assembly's majority decides who becomes Chief Minister (the Governor formally appoints whoever can hold the Assembly's confidence), and MLAs can move, or must face, confidence and no-confidence motions.
• Recommending local development works through the MLA-LAD constituency fund, where the state runs one (the MLA recommends; district officials execute).
• Parliamentary tools to question the executive: Question Hour, calling-attention motions, adjournment/short-duration debates, resolutions, and private member's bills.
• Membership and scrutiny work on Assembly committees such as Public Accounts, Estimates, and subject committees.
• Raising constituency grievances and demands directly with ministers, the district administration, and departments.
• Acting as part of electoral colleges: elected MLAs help elect the President of India (Article 54) and elect the state's Rajya Sabha members (Article 80); in states with a second house they also elect some Legislative Council members.
• Helping decide some changes to the Constitution - for certain amendments that affect the states' powers, the state Assembly must approve (ratify) them (Article 368).
• In states that have two houses, taking part in how the Assembly and the Legislative Council work together on laws - though the Assembly has the final say (Article 197).
• If appointed a Minister/CM: exercising executive powers over the assigned department(s) and the state administration.

Not their job - ask instead

• National / Union subjects - defence, foreign affairs, railways, national highways, income tax, currency, telecom, and citizenship. Ask your Member of Parliament (MP) and the Union government; these are decided in Parliament, not the state Assembly.
• Everyday city/village civic services - garbage collection, street lights, local drains, ward roads, and property tax within a municipal or panchayat area. These belong to your Municipal Corporator/Councillor or Panchayat member and the Mayor/Sarpanch and the local body, not the MLA.
• Actually executing works and running government offices - an ordinary MLA only recommends and demands. Delivery is done by the bureaucracy: the District Collector/Magistrate (called Deputy Commissioner in some states) and department officers, answerable through the government, not directly to the MLA.
• Court cases, verdicts, bail, and interpreting the law - that is the judiciary (courts), which is independent of legislators.
• Petrol/diesel pump prices, GST rates, and bank interest rates are not set by one MLA. Fuel prices mostly follow global crude-oil costs plus central excise duty and state VAT; GST rates are fixed jointly by the Union and all the states together in the GST Council; interest rates are set by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Your state government does set its own VAT on fuel, but that is a government and budget decision, not something a single MLA controls.
• Giving someone a government job or transferring an official - recruitment is done by public service commissions and recruitment boards on merit; postings are administrative decisions, and pressuring for them can itself be misconduct.
• Ground-level policing and law-and-order enforcement decisions - handled by the police and the state Home department (an MLA can raise concerns but does not command the police unless serving as the relevant minister).