Rajya Sabha witnesses 100 percent productivity in Winter Session

In the valedictory address to the Elders, Mr Naidu said while the last session recorded productivity of 104 per cent by availing more than the available time for transacting the business, this session too has clocked 100 per cent productivity.

This is perhaps, for the first time that this House has recorded 100 per cent productivity for two successive sessions.

As against the total scheduled available time of 108 hours 33 minutes during this session with 20 sittings, the House functioned for 107 hours 11 minutes resulting in a productivity of 99 per cent.

A total of 11 hours 47 minutes, accounting for about 11 per cent of the available time of the House has been lost due to interruptions.

Spurred by the sense of duty, the Members, however, sat for 10 hours 52 minutes beyond the scheduled hours, resulting in productivity of close to 100 per cent during this session.

To give you an idea of the distribution of time on different items of business, 39 per cent of the total

functional time has been spent on legislative business, 25.4 per cent on raising and discussing matters of urgent public importance under Short Duration Discussion, two Calling Attention Notices, Zero Hour and Special Mentions, 13 per cent on Question Hour meant for ensuring accountability of the executive and 5 per cent on Private Members’ Bills.

The Chairman informed that 171 of the Starred Questions, accounting for 67 per cent of the total 255 questions scheduled to be taken up have been orally answered during this session.

This comes to 9.5 questions orally answered per day which is the best performance in the last 49 years since 1971, for which data is available. The previous best has been 8.71 starred questions orally answered per day during the 198th session in 2003.