Kirron Kher, Vinod Khanna in House, but mum

The celebrities in Lok Sabha have done better than their counterparts in the Upper House on the attendance front but have been found lacking in participating in the workings of the Lower House.

Updated on: Aug 12, 2014, 10:20:21 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The celebrities in Lok Sabha have done better than their counterparts in the Upper House on the attendance front but have been found lacking in participating in the workings of the Lower House.

Recently, a row erupted over Rajya Sabha members cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and Bollywood actress Rekha remaining absent from the House since they were nominated by the UPA government.

In comparison to them, the celebrities in 16th Lok Sabha — about 10 members from the world of entertainment and sports — have done much better.

Vinod Khanna, the BJP member from Punjab, has highest attendance of 95% among all celebrities but he has not participated in a single debate or raised a question on the House, the data compiled by civil society body Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) says. The compilation is based on members signing on daily attendance register — a must to receive their allowance from the Lok Sabha.

Khanna’s contemporary in Bollywood and MP from Mathura, Hema Malini, however, has a dismal performance with attendance of less than 10% in 21 days. Another cine star and first-time MP, Paresh Rawal, had about 71 % attendance but did not participate in any debate. BJP’s Chandigarh MP, actor Kirron Kher, had 90% attendance, but she too did not participate in any debate.

AAP MP Bhagwant Mann has been outstanding. He participated in debates on the budget, raised several questions and attended two-thirds of the sittings. Mann was followed by Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, BJP MP and shooter, who raised couple of questions and participated in a debate. He had 90% attendance.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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