9 MPs, including 2 from Bengal, did not utter a single word in 17th Lok Sabha
Among the 543 members, a total of nine individuals remained conspicuously silent throughout their tenure in the outgoing 17th Lok Sabha, according to statistics collated by the non-governmental organisation PRS Legislative Research and reported in The Hindu.
Of these nine members of Parliament (MPs), two are surprising inclusions because they are prominent film stars known for their dynamic dialogue delivery—Sunny Deol from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), representing Gurdaspur parliamentary constituency, and Shatrughan Sinha from All India Trinamool Congress (AITC), representing Asansol.
According to sources, Speaker Om Birla tried his best to make them participate in the proceedings by utilising platforms such as Zero Hour for addressing national issues—and calling several of them to his chamber personally at different times to encourage them—but to no avail.
Deol joined the BJP in 2019 and became an MP on his first try. Sinha was a multiple-term BJP MP (and Union minister in PM Vajpayee’s cabinet) till 2019, when he was not given a ticket. He resigned and joined the Congress. He joined the Trinamool Congress in 2022 and fought and won the by-election to the Asansol constituency, the seat vacated as a result of the sitting MP Babul Supriyo resigning from the BJP and joining Trinamool.
The other MP from Bengal in the list is Dibyendu Adhikari from Tamluk Lok Sabha constituency. He won on a Trinamool ticket in 2019 but switched sides to the BJP after his younger brother Suvendu did so a few months before the 2021 assembly elections (the latter is now the leader of the Opposition in the assembly).
The other six are BN Bache Gowda, Anantkumar Hegde, V Sreenivasa Prasad, Ramesh C Jigajinagi (all with the BJP and all from Karnataka), Pradhan Baruah (BJP, from Assam) and Atul Kumar Singh (Bahujan Samaj Party, from Uttar Pradesh).
If it is any excuse, Jigajinagi has been unwell for a long time and Singh has been in jail for a significant part of his term.
Another statistics: Six of the members at least had written participation through submitting questions for written answers or making written special mention submissions, but the last two mentioned MPs, along with Shatrughan Sinha, did not even have those.
