New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi bid farewell to the 72 members retiring from the House who will be retiring from their services till August this year.No Zero or Question hour was taken up today and the leaders spoke in the House on the occasion.
The Prime Minister urged the retiring Rajya Sabha MPs to share their experiences of the House across the country and inspire coming generations.
PM Modi said, "Our RS Members have a lot of experience..sometimes experience has more power than academic knowledge.. We will say to the retiring members 'come again'."
The Prime Minister added, "We have spent a long time in this Parliament. This House has contributed a lot to our lives, more than we have contributed to it. The experience gathered as a member of this House should be taken to all four directions of the country."
The Vice President of India, Venkaiah Naidu, will also host a dinner for the 72 retiring MPs at his official residence.
At the dinner, about half a dozen Rajya Sabha Members will showcase their cultural talents. Dr Santanu Sen will play the Guitar; Dola Sen will present Rabindra Sangeet; Tiruchi Siva will render a Tamil song; Rupa Ganguly, a Hindi song, and Ramachandra Jhangra, a patriotic song; Vandana Chavan will sing a Hindi song. These individual performances will be followed by a chorus song. The senior officials of the RS Secretariat have said that the members of the House will showcase their cultural talents after 20 years at such an occasion.
Rajya Elections for 13 seats to be held today
Voting for the 13 Rajya Sabha seats will take place today across six states. Five Rajya Sabha nominees of the Aam Admi Party (AAP) have already been elected to the Upper House unopposed on the back of the party sweeping the Assembly elections in the state recently. The BJP nominee S Phangnon Konyak has also been elected to the Upper House unopposed from Nagaland. She will be the first woman member of the Rajya Sabha from Nagaland.
The BJP candidate Sikander Kumar has also been elected to the Rajya Sabha unopposed from Himachal Pradesh. With the BJP having 43 MLAs in the 68-member Himachal Pradesh Assembly, Congress hadn't fielded candidates in the biennial polls for the Rajya Sabha. For six other Rajya Sabha seats, voting is underway in Kerala, Tripura and Assam. In Tripura, the ruling BJP has fielded state unit party chief Manik Saha while the Left Front has nominated senior CPI (M) leader Bhanu Lal Saha. Kerala will elect three members for the Rajya Sabha. Incidentally, one-third of the members of the Rajya Sabha from each state retire every two years on the completion of their six-year terms.