LS attendance: Amaresh Naik tops; MPs, Prajwal last

The 17th Lok Sabha elected in May this year witnessed two eventful sessions. During the two sessions, touted to be the ‘most productive’ in Lok Sabha history due to the sheer number of bills passed, MPs from Karnataka were present on 43 of the 57 days (77% attendance) on an average.

Topping the list of Karnataka MPs - which excluded three Union Ministers D V Sadananda Gowda, Pralhad Joshi and Suresh Angadi - in terms of attendance was BJP’s Raja Amaresh Naik from Raichur, who was present on all the 57 days of the monsoon and winter sessions.

At the bottom of the pile was first-time MP from Hassan Prajwal Revanna, present only for 22 of the 57 days - 38.6% - during the sessions. While Prajwal was present for 17 of the 37 days of his maiden Lok Sabha session in August, he was present for only five of the 20 days during the winter session. He was the only MP who was absent for more than half of the 57 days.

With BJP sweeping 25 of the 28 seats in the Lok Sabha elections, all the MPs in the top five were from BJP.

Overall attendance rates decreased from the first session to the second session. While average attendance was as high as 87.83% during the 37-day monsoon session, it dipped to 57.6% for the recently concluded winter session.

Naik also topped the list in terms of questions asked (starred and unstarred), with a total of 105 questions during the sessions. Among those who did not raise any questions include Prajwal, Anantkumar Hegde (Uttara Kannada), Ramesh Jigajinagi (Vijayapura), Koppal MP Sanganna Karadi and Chamarajanagar MP V Srinivas Prasad.