Rajya Sabha Chairman Could Remove MPs from Parliamentary Committees Who Fail to Turn up for Meetings

New Delhi: The extremely low attendance in the Standing Committee for Urban Development has, in a way, set the cat amongst the pigeons, with custodians of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha taking serious cognizance of the issue.

According to sources, Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu is in the process of writing to all party leaders drawing their attention to the seriousness of Parliamentary Committees and how parties must ensure their MPs participate in the proceedings.

The Standing Committee, set up under the chairmanship of BJP Rajya Sabha MP Bhupendra Yadav for the Surrogacy Bill, is expected to note the attendance of the 23 members and inform the Rajya Sabha Secretariat and also present the report of attendance before the House.

It may be noted that at a certain stage, the Vice President, who is the ex-officio Chairman of the Upper House, may also look to implement an existing rule of removing an MP from a said committee should he/she fail to attend two or more meetings of any committee without prior communication or approval of its chairperson.

Since the UD Committee case, after a complaint letter of by Chairperson Jagdambika Pal, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Tuesday had summoned ministry officials who had missed out on the meeting without prior notice and emphasised that such repeat cases will not be encouraged. Birla had also communicated his displeasure to the respective floor leaders at the members missing committee meetings.

Following the incident on November 15, during his all-party meeting with Rajya Sabha floor leaders two days later, Naidu had urged them to encourage their MPs to be regular at committee meetings.