New Delhi: Bidding farewell to 72 retiring RS members on Thursday, 31st March, PM Modi said, “ Our Rajya Sabha members have a lot of experience. Sometimes experience has more power than academic knowledge. We shall tell the retiring members ‘come again’.”
“In the 75th year of India’s independence, our great men have given us a lot, and now it is our responsibility to make our contribution to the nation,” the prime minister added.
RS Chairman Venkaiah Nadu noted that the retiring members have a vast pool of considerable legislative experience, domain knowledge, parliamentary skills and proven performance in the House, he said, “It is not often that such a pool of performers retire in one go”. The retiring members, he said, have a total parliamentary experience of 181 terms including 143 terms in the Rajya Sabha and 38 in the Lok Sabha.
Unlike the lower house, the upper house which is a permanent body cannot be dissolved. However, its members are switched every second year and the vacancies are filled up through presidential nominations and elections.
The retiring members include A K Antony, Ambika Soni, P Chidambaram, Anand Sharma, Jairam Ramesh, Suresh Prabhu, Praful Patel, Subramanian Swamy, Prasanna Acharya, Sanjay Raut, Naresh Gujral, Satish Chandra Mishra, MC Mary Kom, Swapan Dasgupta and Narendra Jadhav.
Of the 72, 65 retiring members represent 19 states while seven are nominated members.