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Naidu wants attendance list of surrogacy panel members
New Delhi: Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidu has asked the Select Committee on the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill to submit the attendance record of the panel members.
New Delhi: Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidu has asked the Select Committee on the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill to submit the attendance record of the panel members. Naidu’s directions comes when he is also weighing other options to improve the attendance in committee meetings, after a Lok Sabha panel was forced to defer its meeting on Delhi pollution due to lack of quorum.
“I would only suggest to the Chairman that, next time, when they present the Report to the House, he must also put an annexure showing how many Members attended how many meetings of this Committee, because certain amount of seriousness has to come into Standing Committee as well as Select Committee. Please keep that in mind,” Naidu told BJP’s Bhupendra Yadav, who will head the panel.
The panel was formed on Thursday to review the Surrogacy bill after many members suggested more changes in the bill that is aimed to curb the mushrooming surrogacy market in India.
While reports of the standing committee do mention the minutes of the meeting and which members were present on a particular day, this is the first time in the recent history that the Rajya Sabha Chairman categorically asks a panel to submit the attendance of its members to the House.
Officials close to Naidu also added that he will write to the leaders of different political parties asking them to ensure that the party MPs regularly attends parliamentary panel meetings. The officials also added that last week, when Congress leader Jairam Ramesh came to present his panel’s first report to Naidu, he too, raised the issue of low attendance in meetings.
Naidu’s insistence on the attendance of members of the Select Committee also assumes significance as the Upper House has a rule that allows the removal of a member from a panel if he doesn’t attend two meetings without the permission of the Chairman.
Rule no. 75 in Rajya Sabha says, “if a member is absent from two or more consecutive meetings of the Select Committee, without the permission of the Chairman of the Committee, a motion may be moved in the Council for the discharge of such member from the Committee.” A senior official of the Rajya Sabha secretariat, however, said that removal of any absentee member is not in Naidu’s mind but as a last resort, he might visit the rule to improve attendance in the House panels.
Last week. the parliamentary committee on urban development was forced to defer its meeting on air pollution in Delhi-NCR because most Members of Parliament and heads of civic and infrastructure agencies simply didn’t turn up. It sparked a huge controversy and even panel chairman Jagdambika Pal appraised Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla about the situation.
Meetings of parliament panels provide an unique pportunity for elected lawmakers from around the country to quiz various agencies on different subjects. The deferment of the meeting also snowballed into a political slug fest with Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) members accusing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members of not taking it seriously.
