'Disruptions eat up one-third of parliament's time'

Chennai, April 20 (IANS) Tamil Nadu Governor K. Rosaiah Saturday said that nearly one-third of parliament's time is lost due to disruptions and asked the legislators to work for restoration of people's confidence in the democratic institutions.

Citing a study done by PRS Legislative Research he said, nearly 32 percent of parliament's time is lost due to disruptions and many bills could not be discussed and members are not able to present their views.

Rosaiah was inaugurating a seminar on 'Politics, Democracy and Governance' organised by Prime Point Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO).

Rosaiah said: "The legislators and parliamentarians should work towards restoring confidence of the people on the democratic institutions."

He recalled President Pranab Mukherjee's address to the joint session of parliament where he said that frequent disruptions would result in people developing cynicism and losing faith in democratic institutions.

Rosaiah said there should be consensus among the law makers in seeing that there is zero disruption in the parliament and state assemblies.

Earlier T.S. Krishna Murthy former chief election commissioner gave away the 'Sansad Ratna' awards to six parliamentarians for their performance.

The four Sansad Ratna awardees in overall category this year were: Anandrao Adsul of the Shiv Sena from Maharashtra, S.S. Ramasubbu of the Congress from Tamil Nadu, Arjun Ram Meghwal of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from Rajasthan and Hansraj Gangaram Ahir of the BJP from Maharashtra.

Two women MPs Rama Devi of the BJP from Bihar and Jhansi Botcha Lakshmi of the Congress from Andhra Pradesh were awarded the 'Sansad Mahila Ratna' awards in the women's category.

According to Srinivasan the founder of Prime Point Foundation, the purpose of the award is to recognise top performers at the national level and motivate others to perform better.