Rajya Sabha bids farewell to 11 MPs

Stating that bringing legislations that will change the future of children should be a priority, he said he prays for a clean, educated, and strong country.

Rajya Sabha on Wednesday bid farewell to 11 members whose tenure will end in November.

The vacancies will bring down the SP and the BSP’s strength in the House, while the BJP will add to its tally when the re-elections are held. The party is in power in Uttarakhand and UP.(ANI)

Of the members who will not be present when the House resumes for the winter session, three are from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), four from Samajwadi Party (SP), and two each from the Congress and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

They members who retired include civil aviation minister and BJP leader Hardeep Singh Puri, BJP’s Neeraj Shekhar and Arun Singh, SP leaders Ram Gopal Yadav , Javed Ali Khan, Ravi Prakash Verma and Chandrapal Singh Yadav , BSP’s Veer Singh and Rajaram and Congress’s Raj Babbar and P L Punia.

While the opposition members were not present inside the House, only BJP’s Neeraj Shekhar made a farewell speech. “As a kid, I used to come to Parliament House with my father (former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar) and we used to play in Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha... There wasn’t much security in those days. Since then, I aspired to become an MP,” he said.

Stating that bringing legislations that will change the future of children should be a priority, he said he prays for a clean, educated, and strong country.

The vacancies will bring down the SP and the BSP’s strength in the House, while the BJP will add to its tally when the re-elections are held. The party is in power in Uttarakhand and UP.

“The retiring members have contributed significantly to the deliberations of this House and the parliamentary committees. I place on record my appreciation for the valuable contributions and service rendered by them with utmost dedication and fervour to further the cause of democracy,” Rajya Sabha chairman M Venkaiah Naidu said. Naidu said some of the members will return to the House after re-election.

Wednesday is the last date of the current monsoon session after the government decided to curtail the 18-day session in view of the pandemic.The session that started on September 14 was to continue till October 1.

(With inputs from PTI)