Gogoi, Dev outperform their BJP counterparts from State

GUWAHATI, June 23: The two Congress first timers in the Lok Sabha from Assam have outperformed their BJP counterparts in so far as participation in debate in Parliament is concerned, a study conducted by PRS website said.

PRS Legislative Research, a leading think-tank of India, regularly alyses the performance of Members of Parliament in the Parliament. The website studies the participation of Members of Parliament (MPs) in debates as a critical metric of active involvement and responsiveness. It has found that the first term Congress MPs – Gaurav Gogoi and Sushmita Dev – have performed well beyond the tiol average when it comes to debate participation. “The tiol average of debate participation stands at 50.6.  Dev with 74 debate participations and Gogoi with 69 debate participations are far ahead,” the website said, and added:  “Other first time MPs – while Pradan Baruah of the BJP participated in zero debate, Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, also a BJP MP, participated in 29 debates, far below the tiol and state average.”

The diverse ture of debate participation Gogoi and Dev indicates extensive contribution and involvement of the young parliamentarians, the website said. According to the study, Gogoi has debated on topics ranging from Demand for Grants, Ministry of Defense 2017, to General Budget 2016 and Uttarakhand Budget 2016-17.  Dev has debated on topics ranging from Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Bull 2016 to Maternity Benefit 2016, Compensation Afforestation Bill, 2015.

There are 14 active Lok Sabha Members of Parliament from Assam of them six are first timers —  four from the BJP and two from the Congress. The first-time BJP MPs are Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, Pradan Baruah, Ram Prasad Sarmah and Rameswar Teli. The PRS website shows that average number of questions asked by an Assam MP is 110. Gogoi alone has raised 200 questions during the period June, 2014 to April, 2019. This is equivalent to the tiol average. Dev has asked 170 questions during the period.

Interestingly, the number of questions asked by the two Assam Congress MPs (370) is almost equal to that raised by all the seven Assam BJP MPs (374).