Friday, April 17, 2009

Political heirs


According to data provided by PRS Legislative Research, a Delhi-based independent research agency, around one in 15 MPs in the Lok Sabha are first timers from political families whose close family members are, or have been, politicians. No MP on the list comes up to the national average on all four metrics—participation in parliamentary debates, number of private member Bills introduced, questions asked and attendance. Only Naveen Jindal, son of former state lawmaker and businessman O.P. Jindal, managed to match—and even better—the national average on three of the four indicators—he participated in 35 debates, asked 376 questions and had 71%, attendance compared with a national average of 30, 169 and 69%, respectively. None of these parliamentarians managed to introduce any private member Bill and touch the national average of 0.6%.

That's from this interesting story by Ruhi Tewari in Miint; other stories in this series are about women and newbie legislators in the Lok Sabha.

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