Bollywood star Hema Malini of the BJP and Bengali actor Tapas Pal have not attended a single session of Parliament.
Actors and other celebrities have poor attendance in Parliament when they turn MP, right? Well yes, and no, according to the attendance register of the 16th Lok Sabha.
Bollywood star Hema Malini of the BJP and Bengali actor Tapas Pal do bring up the bottom with zero attendance - not having made an appearance at all in the first session so far - and Mr Pal's colleague in filmdom and the Trinamool Congress, Dev, has 7 per cent. But Moon Moon Sen and Shatabdi Roy, both successful actors and Trinamool MPs too, have been very regular. Ms Sen has 73 per cent attendance, while Ms Roy has notched up a 93 per cent attendance in the Budget session so far.
Data compiled by PRS India till July 25 for the on-going Budget session in fact shows that these women MPs from Bengal have a better record than some members of prominent political families. Like Dimple Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, wife of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister AkhileshYadav, who has an alarming 13 per cent attendance. Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje's son Dushyant Singh is only a little better at 27 per cent.
But again, for every Dushyant Singh, there is a Dushyant Chautala, the 26-year-old grandson of Indian National Lok Dal chief O P Chautala and MP from Haryana. He has participated in six debates, asked 49 questions and has 80 per cent attendance.
But the ones who crest the young brigade for not having missed a single day of the Budget session are first-timers Chirag Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party, son of party chief Ram Vilas Paswan, and Poonam Mahajan of the BJP, daughter of former minister Pramod Mahajan.
Among the more seasoned politicians, deputy leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, Captain Amarinder Singh, who defeated Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in Amritsar, has attended only 33 per cent of the session. And his party colleague and former Union Minister Kamal Nath, as a nine-time MP the senior-most member of the Lok Sabha, has attended only 53 per cent of the Budget session.