Why India needs a Congress-mukt Rajya Sabha

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had coined the slogan of a "Congress-mukt Bharat" (Congress-free India) in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. That seems to be materialising. But what is more necessary for the country is, in fact, a Congress-free Rajya Sabha. The Congress party, which has just 45 members in the 545 Lok Sabha, is the largest group in the 242-member Rajya Sabha with 67 MPs. Taking undue advantage of this, the grand old party of the country is out to stymie the growth of the country by creating ruckus in the Upper House and disrupting its smooth functioning.

The Congress party is clearly working on a strategy to not allow passage of key Bills - Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill being just one of the them - by blocking them in Rajya Sabha. In the process, it is not only committing political harakiri but is also working against national interest. Hence, the sooner the Congress cedes space to other political parties, the better for the nation.

A comparative look at the performance of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha ever since the Modi government came to power proves that the Upper House, led by the Congress party, lags far behind the Lower House in terms of efficiently conducting the legislative business.

The 16th Lok Sabha has held 127 sittings in six sessions since June 4, 2014, when it met for the first time. In the corresponding period, the Rajya Sabha has held 101 sittings in seven sessions, since June 9, 2014. While the Lok Sabha sat for a whopping 727 hours, the Rajya Sabha clocked 422 hours' sitting. The most important figure comes now - while the time lost in Lok Sabha due to disruptions and forced adjournments so far has been 67 hours (9 per cent), it is 206 hours (48 per cent) in the Rajya Sabha.

Hence, the efficiency of the Lok Sabha is a decent 91 per cent as against the 52 per cent of the Rajya Sabha, thanks to the Congress.

Performance of 16th Lok Sabha

Why is it so?

Because, the NDA is in a majority in the Lok Sabha and, hence, ensures that it functions efficiently. On the other hand, the Congress-led UPA, through its rent-a-cause-a-day tactics, has been disrupting the proceedings of the Rajya Sabha on one pretext or the other. The Congress party got exposed when, while disrupting the House over summons issued to party president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi by the trial court in the National Herald case, it suddenly changed tack to declare that it was protesting against Lalit Modi-related cases and Vyapam scam.

Coming back to the Bills, the Lok Sabha has introduced 80 of them in the last six sessions and passed 74. In stark contrast, only three Bills have been introduced in the Rajya Sabha in the corresponding period and 50 (the pending ones) have either been passed or returned to the Lok Sabha due to the non-cooperation of the Congress party.

The sorry state of affairs in the Upper House was pointed out by its Chairman, Hamid Ansari, quite succinctly in his valedictory address on December 23. He said, "The 237th Session of the Rajya Sabha, that last week seemed singularly unproductive in terms of legislative work, comes to an end this afternoon after having redeemed itself somewhat in the past three days... The Chair appeals to the members: to introspect on this state of affairs, to desist from approaches and practices that demean the stature of the Rajya Sabha, and urges them to make the fullest possible use of the instrumentalities of accountability and discussion available to them under the Rules of Procedure." 

Performance of Rajya Sabha since 16th Lok Sabha was constituted