New Delhi: According to a study by the House Secretariat, 78% of Rajya Sabha members attend the proceedings daily. The analysis of the attendance of MPs in the Parliament’s Upper House revealed that AIADMK’s SR Balasubramaniam is one of the most regular Rajya Sabha members.
The study states that the 75-year-old MP participated in all 138 sittings of these 7 sessions. It showed that around 30 percent of members attended a meeting in full and that less than two percent did not attend.
Five of the members — Ashok Bajpai, DP Vats, Neeraj Shekhar, Vikas Mahatme and Ramkumar Verma — attended all six sessions, while seven members — Rakesh Sinha, Sudhanshu Trivedi, Dr Kailash Soni, Naresh Gujral, Vishambar Prasad Nishad, Kumar Ketkar and Amee Yagnik — attended five sessions.
Following Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu’s request to know how members of Parliament attended proceedings, the first-ever quantitative analysis of their attendance was undertaken. Since ministers, Deputy Chairman, Leader of the House, and Leader of the Opposition are not required to sign the attendance register, 225 Members marked their attendance daily, as required by the Members of Parliament (Salary and Allowances) Act, according to the analysis.
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The highest daily attendance of 82.57 percent was recorded during the 254th Session (last monsoon session), while the lowest of 72.88 percent was recorded during the preceding one. 29.14 percent reported full attendance during this period while only 1.90 percent never attended the proceedings for various reasons and were granted leave of absence.
In addition, the analysis revealed that the pandemic had no effect on attendance during the last three sessions. On the 252nd session, the first to take place after the COVID-19 protocol, 99 members (44.19%) attended the ten sessions, whereas 98 members (46.1%) did so on the 17 panels of the 254th session.
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