The Parliament’s Upper House witnessed an interesting winter session with numerous disruptions and 12 opposition members suspended for the entire session. The house was adjourned sine die on December 22, even as the opposition continued with its protests.
According to government data, the last five sessions of Parliament were adjourned ahead of their scheduled time losing a total of 29 sittings. Of these five sessions, at least three were lost due to the spread of Covid-19 and one because political parties wanted to go for election campaigning in April.
Data also shows that these were not the only exceptions, given the fact that 51 per cent of the last 63 sessions in a period of 20 years were adjourned before time owing to multiple issues.
Concerned by the disruptions in the House, Rajya Sabha chair M Venkaiah Naidu asked the Rajya Sabha secretariat to undertake a detailed study and research.
It was then brought to his notice that since the 193rd session held in July-August, 2001, 32 out of 63 sessions till the just concluded winter session, ended before schedule. While 25 sessions (40 per cent) of the 63 ran their full course, six sessions (9 per cent) concluded beyond the scheduled duration.
On account of running short of the scheduled calendar of sittings, Rajya Sabha has lost a total of 108 sittings (7.42 per cent of total scheduled sittings) over the past 20 years. With the House meeting beyond schedule for a total of 23 sittings in six sessions, the net loss was 85 sittings accounting for 6 per cent of total scheduled sittings of 1,455 over 20 years.
Over the last seven years, of 25 sessions held since the 231st in June 2014, 14 have fallen short of the schedule accounting for 56 per cent of the total. Three of them were affected by the pandemic outbreak. Out of the total scheduled sittings of 507 during this period, the House lost a total of 39 sittings (7.69 per cent of the total scheduled sittings).
Rajya Sabha sat for an extra eight sittings during the 249th session, reducing the net loss of sittings to 31 (6 per cent of total scheduled sittings).
The data analysed shows that Rajya Sabha lost a net of about 7 per cent of total sittings due to premature adjournment of the House.
It has also been noted that the reason behind such adjournments included disagreements between the parties in the House and, most recently, due to rise in Covid-19 cases.
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