Neither House of India's Parliament has been formally closed since 13 August, leaving the Monsoon session technically open for 88 days and setting a record.
As of Monday morning, neither the Lok Sabha nor the Rajya Sabha had been prorogued. The longest previous gap between an indefinite adjournment and a formal prorogation was 87 days, in 2008.
The two terms are easy to confuse and do different work. Adjournment sine die ends the sittings. Prorogation ends the session itself, and is done formally rather than by the presiding officers in the chamber.
Keeping a session open has one practical consequence. An extended or special sitting within an existing session requires a minimum of two days' notice. Convening a fresh session requires at least 14.
That gap of twelve days is why the delay has been read as deliberate. The Press Trust of India reported, in a story carried by The Hindu, that the decision not to prorogue has kept alive speculation that Parliament could be convened at short notice to consider a proposed constitutional amendment linked to the implementation of the Women's Reservation Bill; the amendment seeks to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha from 543 seats to a maximum of 850 through delimitation.
A similar Constitution Amendment Bill failed to secure the required numbers in the Lok Sabha during a special sitting of the Budget session on 17 April.
None of this is irregular. The Constitution does not prescribe any period within which a House must be prorogued after being adjourned sine die, and remaining unprorogued for an extended stretch does not, by itself, amount to a constitutional or procedural impropriety.
Nor is it unprecedented in kind, only in length. Parliament stayed unprorogued for 87 days in 2008, 76 days in 1987, 54 days in 1989, 49 days each in 2006 and 2013, and 41 days in 1963.
The 2008 case is the closest comparison. The Lok Sabha met for two days in July, was then kept open, reconvened on 17 October and was adjourned on 24 October to meet again in December.
It is worth stating plainly what the new record measures. For 88 days India's Parliament has been in session. For 88 days it has not sat. Both sentences are accurate, and only one of them is about anybody being in the building.
This newspaper regards the arrangement as efficient. A session that is open but empty costs nothing in sittings and returns a saving of twelve days' notice, which is the entire output of the period.
The arithmetic rewards patience. Every additional day of not proroguing preserves the same twelve-day advantage, so the advantage is held at no marginal cost and for an unlimited term.
Our analysts note that the saving can only be spent once. Until it is spent, the session goes on holding it, in the manner of a deposit that matures the instant somebody decides to use it.
The record itself follows from the same logic. The longest-running session will always be the one in which the least happened, because any sitting at all would have given someone a reason to close it.
The Department of Unnecessary Research has filed the obvious recommendation. Parliament should never be prorogued again. It would then be permanently in session, permanently two days away, and permanently not sitting.