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.

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 403 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 the President has the power to nominate 2 Anglo Indians to the Lok Sabha, similarly, the Governor also has the power to nominate a certain number of members from the Anglo Indian community as he deems fit, if he is of the opinion that they are not adequately represented in the Assembly.

A Legislative Council is the name given to the legislatures, or one of the chambers of the legislature of many nations and colonies.

A member of a legislative council is commonly referred to as an MLC.

Dr Margaret Ng Ngoi-yee (Chinese: 吳靄儀; born 1948, Hong Kong) is a politician, barrister, writer and columnist in Hong Kong. She has been a member of Legislative Council of Hong Kong since 1995.

In every legislative election held since the creation of the Hong Kong SAR, Ng has been returned with resounding majorities to represent the Legal Functional Constituency. Ng belongs to the Basic Law Article 45 Concern Group (the former Basic Law Article 23 Concern Group), a pro-democratic organization which has specifically campaigned against the efforts of the pro-Beijing administration to abridge the civil liberties of Hong Kong residents. Ng is also an executive committee member of the Civic Party.

Before entering legal practice, Margaret Ng worked at the University of Hong Kong and Chase Manhattan Bank (now JP Morgan Chase). She also held senior positions in journalism, serving as publisher and deputy editor-in-chief of the Ming Pao newspaper; and as columnist for South China Morning Post.

Besides being a lawyer and journalist of profound experience and acumen, Ng is also an accomplished expert in the fields of philosophy and literature. She has written several volumes of critical studies on the wuxia novels of Jin Yong and earned her Doctor of Philosophy degree from Boston University.