78% of RS members attend House proceedings daily: Study

New Delhi: In a first-ever quantitative indication of the extent of participation of Members of Parliament in the proceedings, it has been found that Rajya Sabha proceedings registered an average daily attendance of 78 per cent members in the last seven sessions, which is highest in terms of percentage of the Members of Rajya Sabha attending the proceedings of the House daily. The findings have been revealed in the analysis of the attendance of Rajya Sabha members, which was undertaken after Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu sought to know the pattern of attendance.

The Rajya Sabha Secretariat analysed attendance data over last seven sessions –from 248th to 254th session –having a total of 138 sittings. It has been found that only 75-year-old SR Balasubramaniam attended all the 138 sittings of these seven sessions.

As per study, with the ministers, Deputy Chairman, Leader of the House and Leader of the Opposition not required to sign the attendance register, about 225 members marked their attendance daily as required under the Members of Parliament (Salary and Allowances) Act. The highest daily attendance of 82.57 per cent was reported during the 254th Session (last monsoon session), while a low of 72.88 per cent was recorded during the preceding one, it stated.

During this period, 29.14 per cent reported full attendance while only 1.90 per cent never attended the proceedings for various reasons and were granted leave of absence by the House, Rajya Sabha sources said. The analysis further revealed that the Covid-19 pandemic did not impact the attendance during the last three sessions. During the 252nd session, the first to be held following Covid-19 protocol, 99 members, accounting for 44.19 per cent of the total, attended the proceedings during all the 10 sittings, while 98 members, accounting for 46 per cent, did so during the 17 sittings of 254th Session.

Session-wise, the number of members with full attendance ranged from 34 (15.27 per cent) during the 251st session to 98 (46 per cent) during the 254th Session, the sources said.

There were two members during the 248th session who did not attend the proceedings at all and 21 during the 252nd session, the first to be held under Covid protocol.

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

Five of the members –Ashok Bajpai, DP Vats, Neeraj Shekhar, Vikas Mahatme and Ramkumar Verma –fully attended six sessions, while seven members –Rakesh Sinha, Sudhanshu Trivedi, Dr Kailash Soni, Naresh Gujral, Vishambar Prasad Nishad, Kumar Ketkar and Amee Yagnik –had full attendance for five sessions, the sources said.