The Karnataka Legislative Assembly sat for only 25 days a year on average, revealed the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) report ‘15th Legislative Assembly of Karnataka: Analysis of Performance of MLAs’.
During 2018-2023, a total of 150 sittings were held and the longest session was the 12th session from February 14, 2022 to March 30, 2022. It had 26 sittings.
The ADR and the Karnataka Election Watch jointly released the report on Wednesday based on the information given by the Karnataka Assembly Secretariat and its website.
In 2018, there were 22 sittings of the Assembly, in 2019 – 18 days, in 2020 – 14 days, in 2021 – 40 days, in 2022 – 45 days, and in 2023 – 11 days.
K.S. Lingaiah, JD(S) MLA for Belur, and Channappa Mallappa Nimbannavar, BJP MLA for Kalaghatgi, had 100% attendance by attending all the 150 sittings.
With 107 days of attendance, the JD(S) topped the party-wise average attendance. The BJP had 99 days, the Congress – 95 days and Independent MLAs – 93 days.
The report said 218 MLAs asked 27,583 questions. The highest number of questions were related to general administration followed by finance/revenue, social welfare, education, and Jal Shakti Vibhag. N.A. Haris of the Congress asked 591 questions — the highest.
A total of 214 Bills were tabled in the 15th Assembly. Out of these, 202 (94%) Bills were passed.
Trilochan Sastry, chairman, founder-member and trustee of ADR said, “Twenty-five days in a year is very poor. If a student has this kind of attendance, he or she will not be allowed to write the examination.”
Harish Narasappa, State coordinator of Karnataka Election Watch, said, “In this election, we must demand regular attendance in the session from contestants. We must insist on them not hopping from one party to another after winning the election for some benefits.”
Vinaya Srinivas, an advocate, said, “Owing to money power, people who are not eligible will be elected. Money power will prevent women and Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe representation in the Assembly. In recent days, muscle power has taken a different perspective — of trolling women politicians on social media. Online abuse will resist women from coming into politics. Therefore, we must ask for some guidelines to prevent all this.”
