The Non-Performing Fish Market

The Winter Session of Parliament is round the corner. But will our politicians actually attend Parliament or will they play hooky as usual? Here are the findings of an RTI that asked for the amount of time spent in the monsoon session actually conducting the business of discussing and passing laws that affect us.

Total number of hours – 114 hrs

Working hours- 24 hrs 22 mins

Hours lost due to interruptions and adjournments – 77 hrs 51 mins

Adjourned out of deference to the demise of Vilasrao Deshmukh- 8 hours 12 mins

To give you an idea of how much work was actually accomplished, a report at the PRS Legislative Research says, “102 Bills are pending at the end of this Monsoon Session. One Bill was withdrawn, 6 legislative Bills were introduced and 4 Bills were passed during the session.”

For Rajya Sabha, the actual sitting hours were – 26 hours and 40 minutes

The actual time lost of sittings – 65 hours and 30 minutes.

The plea was filed by RTI activist, Subhash Chandra Aggarwal of Delhi.