New Delhi: BJP MPs Anant Kumar Hegde and Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Shiromani Akali Dal’s Sukhbir Singh Badal, Trinamool Congress’ Derek O’Brien and Mimi Chakraborty, and Bahujan Samaj Party’s Satish Chandra Mishra are among the 25 parliamentarians — from both the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha — who have not attended a single meeting of the eight department-related standing committees of which they are members, ThePrint has learnt.
Department-related standing committees examine demands for grants and bills of different ministries and provide guidance to ministries in policy formulation, with an eye to strengthen the accountability of the government to Parliament. All the eight committees are serviced by the Rajya Sabha secretariat.
BJP’s Anil Baluni, who is a member of the standing committee on science and technology, also did not attend a single meeting, but he is undergoing treatment for an illness, according to a party leader who did not want to be named.
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Details of the committees
The detailed break-up of members who were absent from meetings of the house committees was presented last week to the Rajya Sabha Chairman, Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu, when he was reviewing the functioning of the eight committees.
The committees examined 20 ministries’ demands for grants during the recess of the budget session from 11 February to 3 March. A total of 243 MPs from both the houses are members of the eight committees.
While BJP has 109 MPs on these committees, Congress has 33 , Trinamool Congress has 14, Samajwadi Party has four and AIADMK has three. Eighty MPs are from other parties, or independents.
A Parliament official, who did not want to be named, said attendance in the meetings is not considered for adoption of reports of the respective committees.
Peeved with the frequent instances of MPs skipping meetings of parliamentary panels, Naidu had last November called chairpersons of the different standing committees to discuss the matter. The meeting was called after a majority of members of the parliamentary panel on urban development failed to turn up for a meeting on 15 November to discuss the rising pollution levels in New Delhi.
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Trinamool Congress tops the list
Among the parties, the Trinamool Congress tops the list with maximum number of MPs who did not attend a single meeting, followed by the BJP and the Congress.
Parliamentary sources said that among the absentee MPs, 57 per cent were from Trinamool Congress, 36 per cent from BJP, 15 per cent from Congress and 50 per cent from other parties.
Naidu had, on 2 March, (the first day of the budget session after recess) informed the Rajya Sabha that a total of 95 MPs had zero attendance in such committee meetings.
The committee on science and technology saw the least attendance, with 18 of the 31 members not attending even a single meeting.
Close behind was the committee on commerce, where 17 of the 31 members did not attend even one meeting. Prominent among them were BJP’s Hegde, Nationalist Congress Party’s Vandana Chavan and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s Asaduddin Owaisi.