Speaking at an event marking the completion of three years in office as Vice-President and Chairman of Rajya Sabha, M. Venkaiah Naidu said on Tuesday that the functioning of the Rajya Sabha has shown certain “winds of change”, with consistently higher level of productivity and increased legislative output over the last few sessions. The attendance in the meetings of the Committees of the Upper house has also for the first time crossed the 50% mark, he added.
A publication titled “Connecting, Communicating, Changing” was also released by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh at the event organised by the Ministry of Information and Public Broadcasting at the Vice-President’s residence.
Presenting the context of his assumption of responsibility, Mr. Naidu said research and analysis commissioned by him had revealed that the productivity of the House has been declining over the last 25 years with the House reporting annual productivity of 100% only once in 1999 during the last 20 years.
However, the overall productivity of the last eight sessions presided over by him during the last three years has been 65.50%, Mr Naidu said, despite the intervening election year seriously impacting the functioning of the House for three sessions.
Referring to improvement in legislative output as yet another indication of change, Mr. Naidu also referred to the 93 Bills passed by Rajya Sabha during the last three years of his Chairmanship.
