Overview of 317th Session of the Senate

The 317th session of the Senate began on Tuesday, January 4 at 4 pm and was prorogued after 45 days on Thursday, February 17, 2022. Even a cursory look at the schedule of sittings during the session makes it clear that the Senate had no substantive business to transact and an effort was being made to fulfil the formality of meeting for the minimum constitutionally required 110 days during a parliamentary year. Since a break of two days is also counted towards the meeting days, the Senate had been meeting for a day or two and then going for a break for 2 days. In general, the Senate met for 3 days in a week while all 7 days of the week were counted towards its tally of meeting days. During the 45 days long session, the house actually met for just 19 days which translates into 42% of the total days counted towards meeting days on paper . Needless to mention that honourable senators are paid their daily allowance for all the days counted towards the meeting days. The schedule of the sittings during the session is given in Appendix A.

The Session met for 47 hours and 56 minutes with an average time of 2 hours and 31 minutes per sitting. If we divide the total working hours over the entire 30 days counted towards meeting days, the average number of working hours per day turn out to be just an hour.

The Senate continued its tradition of punctuality and the average delay of in starting a sitting was just 5 minutes during the session.