Less than half of 483 Lok Sabha MPs attended 90-100% of sittings in Parliament’s budget session, shows analysis | India News

NEW DELHI: As parties gear-up for taking up a wide range of issues during Parliament’s monsoon session — expected to be fiery in light of Ram temple and NEET-UG paper leak issues — the presence of MPs in both Houses is most crucial. An analysis of attendance record of the previous budget session, which ended in April, by NGO Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative shows that it is the smaller parties — with a handful of MPs — that have the highest average attendance record figures.Overall in Lok Sabha, as many as 101 MPs had signed the attendance register for all 31 sittings of the budget session — less than a quarter, or just about 21% of the 483 MPs whose attendance record was publicly available.In terms of average attendance record of parties in LS, RLP — that has one MP (Hanuman Beniwal from Nagaur — and RLD — that has two MPs (Chandan Chauhan from Bijnor and Rajkumar Sangwan from Baghpat — registered 100% attendance record for all 31 sittings. CPI(ML-L) stood second — with two of its MPs attending 30 out of the 31 sittings — as did Zoram People’s Movement with its lone MPs. Samajwadi Party took third position — with 37 of its MPs averaging attendance of 28.43 days.Overall less than one half (45.7%) of the 483 LS members had attended between 90-100% of the sittings or at least signed the attendance register. The report examines the attendance record as available on the website of both Houses for the budget session to spot political party-wise trends and patterns.The single-largest party in LS, BJP (with details of 191 members available) averaged only 26.46 sittings per MP. Congress — single-largest party in opposition — averaged only 23.13 sittings (with details of 97 MPs available). Among regional political parties with more than 20 MPs during the budget session, TMC averaged only 15 sittings and DMK with 22 MPs even lesser with 14.64 sittings.In Rajya Sabha, 119 MPs — less than 46.6% of 255 MPs had attended between 90-100% of the sittings or at least signed the attendance register for those many days.The top 10 political parties clocking the highest percentage of attendance are regional parties. DMDK with its lone MP (LK Sudhish) is the only one who recorded 100% attendance, followed by J&K-NC with three MPs clocking an average of 94.62%. MPs from JDS, MNF, BJD, SP, NPP and SS all recorded an average of more than 90% attendance.Despite being the largest party in the House, BJP recorded an average attendance of only 84.39% followed by Congress recording 80.66%, the report stated.