If Rajya Sabha was an obstacle for the government in the past few years to get bills passed, 2019 appeared to be different as it finished with ‘best per day’ legislative output in 36 years after being able to pass 0.80 bill per day or 4 bills in 5 days.
The previous best was in 1984 when Rajya Sabha passed 80 bills in 63 sittings with an output of 1.26 bills per day. During the last 67 years since the inception of Rajya Sabha in 1952, the legislative productivity has been little over one bill per day in only six years -- 1976, 1984, 1985, 1993, 2002 and 2003.
“Rajya Sabha ends the year 2019 on a high note marking a break from the disruptive preceding years. This year’s productivity of Rajya Sabha has been the best since then with Sessions of comparable duration,” a senior Rajya Sabha functionary said.
For the current Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu, 2019 too proved to be the best after he assumed the post after his election as Vice President of India. “The productivity in terms of legislative output has been 0.70 bill per day during 2017 which plummeted to 0.28 bill per day during 2018. The legislative output of Rajya Sabha has increased by almost three times in 2019 from that of the preceding year,” the official said.
At the conclusion of the Winter Session of Parliament, Naidu had said, “the ship of Rajya Sabha which has been passing through turbulent waters for some time has now been steadied.” For the first time, he had said, that two successive sessions of Rajya Sabha (249th and 250th Sessions) have reported about 100% productivity.
