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.

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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.