Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu has directed the Secretariat to prepare reports on the participation of all the members under various windows to inform them at the end of each session of the House.
In its study, the Rajya Sabha secretariat has revealed that different parties got their due share of opportunities of participation under various windows during the first part of the Budget session that concluded on the 11th of this month. The study was done to know if the parties were getting equitable opportunities in the Council confirmed fair and proportional share for different parties with the opposition getting slightly more in the total 1,460 opportunities.
According to sources, the study reveals that BJP with 82 members accounting for 34 percent of the strength of 239 of the House got 480 opportunities amounting to 33 percent of the total. Congress with 46 members constituting 19 percent of the strength got 345 opportunities which comes to 24 percent share of the total.
"The 10 recognised parties in the House with five members and above each with a total of 190 members accounting for 80 percent of the strength of the Council got about 81 percent of the total opportunities.
Others including regional parties and independents amounting to 20 percent of the membership of the House got 19 percent share of participation indicating broad correspondence between the strength and share of opportunities," it said.
The eight non-NDA parties, featuring among the 10 recognised parties together got a higher share of opportunities in proportion to their strength. Besides BJP that got 1 percent lesser share, JDU could avail 0.55 percent of total chances of participation as against it's strength of 2.51 percent in the House, primarily due to none of it's members getting any Unstarred Questions listed during the session.
Among the opposition and non-NDA parties, Congress, TMC, AIADMK got proportionally higher opportunities while BJD, DMK, TRS and CPM got their due share. Only SP got a lesser share.
During the session, 107 members participated in the Question Hour, 100 took part in the two debates on the Motion of Thanks to the President and the General Budget, 76 Zero Hour and 33 Special Mentions were made, 24 participated in the lone discussion on a Private Member's Bill besides 1,120 Unstarred Questions of 118 members replied in writing. This makes the zone of opportunities of participation as 1,460. Equity of participation was analysed against this window of total opportunities of participation.