Member of the Legislative Assembly (India)

A Member of Legislative Assembly, or MLA, is a representative elected by the voters of an electoral district to the Legislature of a State in the Indian system of government. Each state has between four and nine MLAs for every Member of Parliament (MP) that it has in the Lok Sabha.A Member of Legislative Council, or MLC, is a representative indirectly elected through an electoral college to the Legislature of a State having a bicameral legislature.

State legislature

The state legislature in Indian States is either bicameral or unicameral type. In most cases, states legislature is unicameral. In unicameral state legislature the (only) house is called Legislative Assembly.

In states where there are two houses there is a Legislative Council along with Legislative Assembly. In such a case, the Legislative Council is the Upper House, while Legislative Assembly is the Lower House of the State Legislature.

Governor is an integral part of the State Legislature.

The Legislative Assembly consists of not more than 500 members and not less than 60. The biggest state like Uttar Pradesh has 425 members in its Assembly. States which have small population and are small in size have a provision for having even lesser number of members in the Legislative Assembly. Pondicherry, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh have only 30 members each. Sikkim has 32 members. All members of the Legislative Assembly are elected on the basis of adult franchise, and one member is elected from one constituency. Just as...
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