RAJYA SABHA FUNCTIONING

April 27, 2020

An analysis by the Rajya Sabha Secretariat has revealed that the Rajya Sabha spends 24% of its time in deliberating and passing laws. Most of its functional time is spent on deliberating issues of public importance.

About:

  • Data from 1978 onwards was analysed. During 1978-2018, the Rajya Sabha held 3,022 sittings and transacted business for 13,946 hours as against the available 18,132 hours. This comes to 76.91% productivity while 23.09% of the available time was lost due to disruptions.

  • Around 40 % of time is spent in deliberating issues of national importance followed by 32 % in asking questions and holding the government accountable.

  • Only 24 % of its functional time is spent on making laws. And an additional 3.5 % is spent on Private members Bills, which have rarely translated into laws though.

  • The time spent on the Government Bills ranged from 10.87% of the time in 2015 to 40.09% in 2002. It has touched a record high of 45.90% during the historic 250th session last year.

  • Deliberative functions like debating electoral reforms or recent discussion on law and order in parts of Delhi take up the largest chunk of time.

  • The oversight function — which is to hold the government accountable by way of asking questions — calling attention motions and so on takes about 32.22% of time with portion of time reserved for the daily question hour.

Source : The Hindu

Latest Current Affairs

See All