78% Rajya Sabha MPs attended sittings daily between 2019-2021

A first-ever analysis of attendance of Rajya Sabha MPs shows that 78 per cent of the lawmakers attended proceedings daily in the last seven sessions between 2019 and 2021 with the highest daily attendance recorded in the July-August Monsoon Session this year.

The analysis undertaken by the Rajya Sabha Secretariat following the instructions of Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu also showed that 29.14 per cent of the MPs attended the proceedings daily, while 1.9 per cent did not attend a single sitting owing to reasons, including ill-health.

Sources said 78 per cent MPs who participated in the proceedings of each sitting of the House are not necessarily the same set of members as it varies from day to day and similar was the case with those who did not attend.

The study was conducted for 138 sittings in the last seven sessions starting with 248th (January 31, 2019 to February 13, 2019) and 254th (July 19, 2021 to August 13, 2021).

The highest daily attendance of 82.57 per cent was reported during the last Monsoon Session, while a low of 72.88 per cent was recorded during the preceding Budget Session (January 29 to March 25).

The analysis further showed that the Covid-19 pandemic did not impact the attendance during the last three sessions held under Covid-19 protocol. During the 252nd session, the first to be held under Covid protocol, 99 members accounting for 44.19 per cent of the total attended the proceedings during all the 10 sittings, while 98 accounting for 46 per cent did so during the 17 sittings of the 254th session.

Session-wise, the number of MPs with full attendance ranged from 34 (15.27%) during the 251st session to 98 (46%) during the 254th Session. Number of MPs with zero attendance ranged from just two (0.9%) during the 248th Session to 21 (9.38%) during the 252nd, the first to be held under Covid-19 protocol.

If one takes individual MPs, 75-year-old S R Balasubramaniam of AIADMK participated in the proceedings of all the 138 sittings of the seven sessions. Five MPs -- Dr Ashok Bajpai, Dr D P Vats, Neeraj Shekhar, Vikas Mahatme and Ramkumar Verma -- had full attendance in six sessions, while seven -- Rakesh Sinha, Sudhanshu Trivedi, Dr.Kailash Soni, Naresh Gujral, Vishambar Prasad Nishad, Kumar Ketkar and Dr Amee Yagnik-- had full attendance for five sessions.

Jaya Bachchan, Jairam Ramesh, Bhupender Yadav, Dr Satyanarayan Jatiya, KJ Alphons, T G Venkatesh, K Ravindra Kumar, P C Gupta, Viplov Thakur, Kanta Kardam and K Somprasad were among 18 MPs who fully attended four sessions.

Anand Sharma, Vayalar Ravi, Dr C P Thakur, Bhubaneswar Kalita, Shiv Pratap Shukla, Prasanna Acharya, GVL Narasimha Rao, K K Ragesh, Prof Manoj K Jha, K Vanlalvena and G C Chandrasekhar were among 30 MPs with full participation in three of the seven sessions.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, AK Antony, P Chidambaram, Anil Jain, O P Mathur, Swapan Dasgupta, Dr Subramanian Swamy, Dr A Navanithakrishnan, Pratap Singh Bajwa, Ramnath Thakur, Praful Patel, Shanta Chettu, Tiruchi Siva, Vinay Sahasrabuddhe and V Vijayasai Reddy were among 70 with full attendance in two of the seven sessions.

Under the statute, the MPs are required to sign the attendance register during every sitting of the House, failing which the daily allowance of Rs 2,000 will not be paid.

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