House productivity less than 10% of average

New Delhi: Two weeks into the month-long session of Parliament and it’s making news for all the wrong reasons. An analysis of the hours spent by members of Parliament in both Houses, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, shows that productivity is less than 10% on average. There were days when less than 3% of the allotted time was used for legislation.

As per the analysis of actual sitting hours, since March 5, when the second part of the Budget session started, till March 16, the maximum work done in the Lower House of Parliament, was on March 14, when members of Parliament spent 42 minutes in the House. That was the day when Appropriations Bill and the Finance Bill were passed by the Lok Sabha, without discussion.

In the Upper House, the maximum sitting by MPs was for one hour on March 8. The reason why the session went on so long was due to Women’s Day, with members speaking on the delay regarding the women’s bill as well as the strides made by women in the country.

The scheduled number of working hours in both Houses is around six hours, says PRS, which conducted the work-hour analysis.

In the Lok Sabha though, it has mostly been disruptions, with actual work taking up 12 to 30 minutes on most days. The least amount spent on legislation was on March 7 by the Upper House — it spent only 9 minutes. The hours lost every day in the Lok Sabha has been over five hours daily.

The Rajya Sabha has not fared any better. Hours lost hover between 4.97 hours to 5.82 hours as most sessions have been adjourned. On most days the number of sitting hours have ranged between 11 minutes to half hour.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the amount of productive hours lost is a huge 90% in both the Houses through the past two weeks.

A result of the minuscule number of hours spent in legislation has been the passage of bills without discussion, like the Union Budget 2018, which didn’t see any discussion. Amendments, like the one allowing political parties to be exempt from scrutiny for funds received from abroad, are other casualties of the incessant adjournments.