RS bids farewell to 11 retiring members

Rajya Sabha on Wednesday bid farewell to 11 of its members who will retire in November this year.
When the House met, Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu mentioned that 11 MPs from Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand are going to be retiring in November.

They include Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav, BSP’s Veer Singh and Raj Babbar of Congress.

Others who will retire are: Javed Ali Khan (SP), P L Punia (Congress), Rajaram (BSP), Neeraj Shekhar (BJP), Arun Singh (BJP), Ravi Prakash Verma (SP) and Chandrapal Singh Yadav (SP).
Naidu said a number of the members will return to the House after re-election.

Wednesday is that the last date of the present monsoon session after the govt decided to curtail the 18-day session in sight of the pandemic.
The session that started on September 14 was to continue till October 1.

Naidu asked retiring members if they wanted to talk .

None of the SP, BSP and Congress members were present within the House due to the opposition boycott of the proceedings against the suspension of eight MPs.

Neeraj Shekhar, who last year converted from SP to BJP, said he has been fortunate to possess been first elected to Lok Sabha then to Rajya Sabha.

“As a kid, I wont to come to Parliament House with my father (former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar) and that we wont to play in Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha… There wasn’t much security in those days. Since then, I aspired to become an MP,” he said.

Stating that bringing legislations which will change the longer term of youngsters should be a priority, he said he prays for a clean, educated, and powerful country.

“We are going to be missing you and other members retiring in November,” Naidu said.