95 MPS didn’t attend RS panel meetings in February: Naidu
NEW DELHI: 95 Members of Parliament didn’t attend any meeting of the standing committees of the Rajya Sabha in the past month, House Chairman Venkaiah Naidu said on Monday, citing a review done by his officials.
The attendance of the lawmakers in eight department-related standing committees was monitored as a part of Naidu’s larger goal to improve participation of MPS in the House panels. Altogether, there are 24 such panels that review the work of different central ministries.
Of these, eight are with the Rajya Sabha and the remaining 16 fall under the jurisdiction of the Lok Sabha.
All committees have members from both houses of Parliament.
“I thought it necessary to present in the process, the functioning of the Parliament in proper perspective to the people through you and the media. It is because, the general impression is that the sittings of the Parliamembers ment are steadily declining over the years and it is around 60 to 70 sittings per year now as against 100 to 150 days per year in the 50s,” Naidu told the House while presenting the report.
The attendance was monitored only for the recess or the period between the two halves of the budget session.
This period is crucial as the budget allocations for respective ministries are discussed in the panels during this period before Parliament clears the union budget.
Naidu said that out of the 78 Rajya Sabha MPS who are members in these eight panels, 23 did not attend any meeting. Similarly, 72 of the 166 Lok Sabha
in these panels skipped all their meetings.
According to the report, the panel on health led by Samajwadi Party leader Ramgopal Yadav has the best attendance, 65.5% followed by the Home and transport panel (54.8%).
The standing committee on Human Resource Development and law recorded 53.7% and 48.3% attendance while the panel on industries has 43.5% turnout.
The panel on science and technology has marked just 35.5% attendance and the panel on commerce recorded the lowest at 32.25%. A senior official added, that in two of the three meetings of commerce panel held during this period, minimum required attendance or quorum was missing.
Naidu pointed out that since the introduction of these committees in 1993, “substantial work of the Parliament is being transacted by these Committees in which all most all the parties and groups are represented.”
He added that the eight Rajya Sabha panels have altogether held 20 meetings lasting at least 63 hours.
NEW DELHI: Against a backdrop of growing concern and uncertainty about the Us-taliban deal, external affairs minister S Jaishankar said on Monday that western powers should ensure the achievements of the past 18 years in Afghanistan aren’t jeopardised.
Worries about the agreement signed by the US and the Taliban in Doha on Saturday have been growing in New Delhi, especially as the deal talks of the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan over the next 14 months without, what experts say, are adequate guarantees from the terror group.
Asked about the deal during an event organised here by the Centre for Policy Research, Jaishankar said: “To the US and to the West, our message has been that the achievements of the last 18 years, it is in the global interest that those achievements are secured and protected, they are not jeopardised in the process of whatever they do.”
He contended recent events hadn’t come as a surprise because “everybody knew something like this was happening”. Only time will tell, he said, how the US goes about reducing its presence and backing the Afghan government and security forces.
Jaishankar highlighted several issues to which there were “no clear answers”, such as cohesion among different stakeholders and whether the Taliban will join a democratic set-up.
“There is a lot of interest in various countries that the neighbours of Afghanistan and those who have interests there also play some role,” he said, referring to India’s stakes in that country.
People familiar with developments and diplomats of several European countries said they believed the deal didn’t go far enough to address counter-terrorism concerns.
In New Delhi, the concerns have centred round reports that some 500 fighters of Pakistanbased Lashkar-e-taiba (LET) have been moved into Afghanistan.
The LET was formed at Kunar in Afghanistan and has longstanding ties with the Taliban and al-qaeda, and its fighters could pose a threat to Indian interests, the people cited above said.