76 hours wastes 19 crore in 15th Lok Sabha

The ninth session of the 15th Lok Sabha, which concluded on Thursday, will go down in history as one of the most disrupted sessions, wasting nearly half of the time in disruptions.

Speaker Meira Kumar also expressed concern that the house was able to take up just 40 starred questions during its 24 sittings averaging a mere 2.05 questions per day.

According to the statistics made available by the Lok Sabha secretariat, the house wasted 76 hours
and 21 minutes in disruptions, while it worked for 82 hours and 45 minutes.

Further, it could not take up any private member business, normally posted on Friday afternoon. Since it is estimated that an exchequer loses Rs25 lakh for every hour of disruption, at least Rs19 crore may have gone down the drain, since this Lok Sabha commenced the session on November 22.

The session, however, succeeded transacting financial business passing the supplementary demands for grants.

Also during the session 27 bills were introduced and 18 were passed, that includes the passage of the Lokpal and Lok Ayuktas Bill.

The discussion on supplementary demands for grants for Railways saw a record 96 Members of Parliament participating in the debate.

The 15th Lok Sabha, completing two-and-a-half years, has also the dubious distinction of being the most disrupted house. It has utilised just 72% of the allotted time so far.

“A look at the number of hours the Lok Sabha has been meeting over the last 25 years indicates a steady decline in productive time.
Further, at its current pace, the 15th Lok Sabha may be the most disrupted in the 25-year-period,” an NGO PRS Legislative Research said in arelease. At least 17% of the bills have been passed this year in less than five minutes without debates.