Rajya Sabha Wasted Half Its Time, Rs. 9.9 crore, On Disruptions In Winter Session

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Dec 23, 2015:  The Winter Session of Parliament which began on November 26 ended on Wednesday, with the Rajya Sabha having worked for just half of the time allotted to work.

The Rajya Sabha where the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is in a numerical minority, lost 55 hours to disruptions by the Opposition. It was scheduled to work for 112 hours during the session.
   
The Lok Sabha, where the BJP has a comfortable majority, worked for 115 hours - an hour extra compared to the scheduled 114 hours.
   
The cost of running each House is Rs. 29,000 per minute and the loss of hours in the Rajya Sabha has resulted in a loss of nearly Rs. 10 Crore to the exchequer.
   
The Lok Sabha passed 14 Bills registering 104 per cent productivity.
   
The Rajya Sabha, however, passed nine bills registering 46 per cent productivity. The Goods and Services Tax bill, introduced in Parliament last year, remains pending in the Upper House.
    The Lok Sabha spent nearly 50 hours on non-legislative business and 33 hours on legislation, according to statistics compiled by the Parliament tracking agency PRS Legislative Research.
   
The Upper House spent 37 hours on non-legislative work and less than 10 hours on legislation. 65 per cent of its time was spent on non-legislative business.
   
The Question Hour - one hour set off every working day of each session exclusively for members to question various ministries on their functioning - in Lower House achieved 87 per cent productivity, clocking nearly 15 hours.
   
In the Rajya Sabha, the Question Hour clocked only 14 per cent productive time at just 2.4 hours for the entire session.
   
After days of repeated diruptions, the Rajya Sabha functioned for five hours at a stretch on December 22, to pass the new juvenile justice bill which had been passed by the Lok Sabha in May.

 

Courtesy: NDTV