Upper House sitting hours dropped on former V-P Jagdeep Dhankhar's watch

Former Vice-President (V-P) Jagdeep Dhankhar resigned on July 21 with 751 days remaining in his tenure, citing health reasons. Before Dhankhar, two V-Ps — V V Giri in 1969 and R Venkataraman in 1987 — resigned from office before completing their term.  As a chair of the Rajya Sabha (RS), Dhankhar’s legacy is a mixed bag. While the average number of hours the RS functioned  during his tenure was lower than his two predecessors, the upper house exceeded 100 per cent of its scheduled time during the Budget sessions of 2024 and 2025.

 

  Rajya Sabha productivity in V-P Dhankhar’s tenure During Hamid Ansari’s second tenure (11 August 2012 to 10 August 2017), the RS functioned for an average 89 hours per session. His successor, M Venkaiah Naidu’s term (11 August 2017 to 10 August 2022) saw an average of 74 hours. Dhankhar’s term saw lowest average of 57 hours.   

 

  Since 2020, particularly during the Covid years through to 2024, the total number of questions asked in the Rajya Sabha has remained below 10,000 annually. Notably, over 80 per cent of these questions fall under the unstarred or written category. 

  In 2025, more time was spent on non-legislative business than the legislative one. However, non-legislative business also included important activities such as calling attention motions and general discussions on various topics.