Want to mark attendance? Stay in your seats: Lok Sabha’s new attendance plan for MPs
The newly designed multi-media device attendance system will work only from the pre-allotted benches of MPs who will need to take their seats if they want to be marked present for a given sitting of the House
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The Lok Sabha secretariat has drafted a new plan to mark the attendance of parliamentarians. It requires them to occupy allotted seats.
The newly designed multi-media device attendance system will work only from the pre-allotted benches of MPs who will need to take their seats if they want to be marked present for a given sitting of the House.
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The current system entails attendance with a tick mark -- a method of marking attendance using a visual check mark or tick symbol within the attendance tracking system.
Lok Sabha sources said the tick marking mechanism takes a lot of time with one MP consuming an average of two minutes a day to mark the presence.
"If you even consider an average of 200 MPs -- nearly half the Lok Sabha strength -- attending Lok Sabha on a given day out of 543, the cumulative time consumed for marking the attendance of all MPs would be around six hours. Average House sittings annually are around 50 to 60 so that much time of the House is consumed simply in marking an attendance," said a Lok Sabha source, adding that the new system would save time and entail smarter plans whereby MPs would be able to mark their attendance in just a second.
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Lok Sabha last year transitioned from manual attendance system to digital. The multi-media device attendance, planned for introduction from the monsoon session, will add a further digital smartness layer to the existing system.
Sources said the new plan would help enforce seat discipline in the House where MPs are often seen occupying other members' seats.
According to PRS Legislative Research, the previous 17th Lok Sabha which held sessions between June 2019 and February 2024 held 274 sittings, the lowest among all previous full-term Lok Sabhas.
On an average, MPs had 79% attendance during the 17th Lok Sabha. This excludes ministers and speakers whose attendance is not recorded.
The average attendance for male MPs was 79%, and female MPs 77%.
Attendance of MPs has ranged between 75% and 80% since the 15th Lok Sabha.
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