Parliament clocks high productivity

Both the Houses of Parliament have passed 30 bills in the just-concluded session, with the Lower House setting the record of being the most productive session and the Upper House clocking the fifth-best in 41 years when it comes to passage of bills.

While Lok Sabha clocked in 281 working hours with a productivity of 135%, Rajya Sabha worked for 195 hours with productivity of 104.92%.

Lok Sabha passed 35 bills in 37 sittings while the Rajya Sabha cleared 32 bills in 35 sittings.

Lok Sabha, which was adjourned sine die on Tuesday, spent 46% of its time on legislative business while Rajya Sabha spent 51%, an analysis by PRS Legislative Research said in its analysis. Rajya Sabha adjourned sine die on Wednesday.

Deliberating on the functioning of Rajya Sabha, its Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu said the Upper House has set a "new normal" in its "highly productive" 249th session.

"I am glad that my optimism has come true during this session. With great pleasure, I have a turn around the story to report to all of you and the people of the country who have been patiently waiting for such a turn around in the form of a functional Housebreaking from the disruptive past," he said.

With 32 bills passed, he said this Session is the best for Rajya Sabha in the last 17 years accounting for 52 sessions and fifth-best in 41 years. He said the 131st session in 1984 was the most productive in which 37 bills were passed in the Upper House since 1978.

"During the last five sessions, the productivity of the House ranged from a low of 7.44% to maximum of 65.60%," Naidu said.

However, he added "a total of 19 hours and 12 minutes of precious time of the House was lost" due to disruptions but gained 28 hours by sitting beyond the scheduled time on 19 days.

According to statistics, with 35 sittings of Rajya Sabha, this session was the longest in the last 14 years after 2005, when the 204th session had 38 sittings.

The longest session since 1952 was the 9th session in 1955 with as many as 50 sittings.