Article 105 — Powers, Privileges and Immunities of Parliament and its Members

(1) Subject to the provisions of this Constitution and to the rules and standing orders regulating the procedure of Parliament, there shall be freedom of speech in Parliament. (2) No member of Parliament shall be liable to any proceedings in any court in respect of anything said or any vote given by him in Parliament or any committee thereof, and no person shall be so liable in respect of the publication by or under the authority of either House of Parliament of any report, paper, votes or proceedings.

Source: Constitution of India, as published by the Ministry of Law and Justice.

Article 105 is modelled on the Parliamentary privilege doctrine in the UK. The tension between parliamentary privilege and criminal law came to a head in P.V. Narasimha Rao v. State (1998), where a majority of the Supreme Court held that MPs who accepted bribes and then voted in a no-confidence motion were protected by Article 105(2). This caused widespread outrage. The court's seven-judge bench in Sita Soren v. Union of India (2024) overruled the 1998 majority, holding that bribery is not protected by parliamentary privilege.

• Article 19
• Article 124

Last reviewed: 3 July 2026