Chennai: When it comes to development, urbanisation and commerce, Tamil Nadu is a clear market leader in the country, but the state’s political performance in Lok Sabha has drawn flak over the last two years.
A recent observation by Prime Point foundation and eMagazine PreSense, which honoured outstanding performers with the Sansad Ratna award, gave a distant eighth place to TN after evaluating the political performance of its 39 MPs.
In fact, neighbouring Karnataka and Kerala edged out TN on performances of MPs. The only respite for TN MPs is that their average attendance is 85 per cent.
The factors that brought TN MPs’ performance down include non-tabling of private members bill in Parliament, lack of effective participation in debates and resistance to ask questions during a discussion.
Besides not securing the Sansad Ratna award given for best parliamentarians, the state has one more demerit as PMK leader and MP Anbumani Ramadoss was last among the 39 MPs from the state, with 40 per cent attendance and initiating barely seven debates.
Youth wing president of PMK, Anbumani Ramadoss has not tabled any private member bills and had asked only 17 questions. One excuse his party would peddle is that he has been busy touring Tamil Nadu to take his anti-liquor campaign to the youth and of course, with another bigger aim of building up his party for the May 2016 elections.
The overall attendance percentage of Tamil Nadu stands at 85 per cent in Lok Sabha and the state parliamentarians has not tabled any private member bills in the past two years. The statistics of various MPs were released by Prime Point Foundation and eMagazine PreSense, which honored the outstanding performers with the Sansad Ratna award. The seventh edition of the awards were presented to six parliamentarians – Shivaji Adhalrao Patil, Heena Vijaykumar Gavit, Rajeev Shankarrao Satav and Shrirang Appa Barne from Maharashtra, P.P. Chaudhary from Rajasthan and P. Rajeev from Kerala.
Addressing the gathering, former chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister and former governor of Reserve Bank of India, Dr C. Rangarajan said the functioning of the parliamentary system over the last seven years is not being functional as designed by the founding fathers of Indian constitution.
Frequent recurrence of disorderliness and interruptions in the proceedings of parliament and legislative assemblies is a disturbing phenomenon, Rangarajan said. Stressing on the importance of youth getting into politics, IIT director, Bhaskar Ramamurthy, expressed interest in sending IIT students to intern in constituencies in technical front.
