With 36 per cent attendance and zero questions, Akhilesh Yadav is the worst performing MP from Uttar Pradesh, according to Shantanu Gupta, author, BJP sympathiser and policy analyst.

As per research compiled by Gupta, the average attendance of parliamentarians from Uttar Pradesh is 88 per cent, which is six per cent more than the national average of 82 per cent in the same period.

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Gupta said contrary to former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, incumbent Yogi Adityanath was quite active when he was a parliamentarian. For instance, during 2014-2017 (16th Lok Sabha), Adityanath participated in 57 debates against the national average of 50.6; he asked 306 questions against the national average of 199 and introduced 3 private member bills against the national average of 1.5 in that period.

On all the four counts of attendance, questions asked, debates and private member bill, Akhilesh Yadav’s performance in parliament is dismal. He is neither seen on the field in Uttar Pradesh nor present in parliament.

In contrast, during the Covid second wave, Yogi Adityanath, just after recovering from Covid, started hitting ground zero.

The Chief Minister monitored many districts within two weeks. During his visits Adityanath also went to Saifai (Etawah), Akhilesh Yadav’s home town and Azamgarh, Akhilesh’s parliamentary constituency.

During the same period Akhilesh Yadav locked himself in his palatial house in Lucknow and restricted himself only to tweeting, Gupta said.

Akhilesh Yadav, National President of Samajwadi Party with 36 per cent attendance has the lowest attendance among the MPs from Uttar Pradesh.

With 44 per cent attendance in this period Sonia Gandhi has the second worst attendance record among MPs from the same state (elected from Rae Bareli).

It is commendable that four BJP MPs from Uttar Pradesh — Bholanath, Jagdambika Pal, Pradeep Kumar and Rajvir Diler have 100 per cent attendance in this period, as per Gupta’s research.

It’s also noteworthy that two six-term MPs Pankaj Chowdhary and Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, both from BJP have 95 per cent and 98 per cent attendance, respectively.

Eighty per cent of BJP parliamentarians have their attendance in the 90-100 per cent range, 60 per cent of BSP MPs have their attendance in the 90-100 per cent range, but when it comes to Samajwadi MPs only 20 per cent have their attendance in the 90-100 per cent range.

Member of Parliaments have a special instrument in forms of questions that they can ask to the government through which they can bring government’s attention to their constituency, their region, their state or to any other national problem.

On this count MPs from Uttar Pradesh on an average asked 44 questions in comparison to 66 questions as the national average. Akhilesh Yadav and Sonia Gandhi asked zero (0) questions to the government in this period.

Nineteen MPs from BJP and one from BSP asked more questions than the national average of 66 questions.

None from Samajwadi and Congress asked more questions than the national average. Twenty-three MPs from BJP and four from BSP asked more questions than the state average of 44 questions. Following the dismal performance of their president Akhilesh Yadav in parliament, none of the Samajwadi Party MPs asked more than even the state average.

Eleven MPs from Uttar Pradesh asked more than 100 questions in this period, significantly higher than the national average — Jagdambika Pal, Vijay Kumar Dubey, Ravindra Shyamnarayan, Kaushal Kishore, Harish Chandra Alias Harish Dwivedi, Ashok Kumar Rawat, Ravindra Kushawaha, Ajay Misra Teni, Vinod Kumar Sonkar, Pushpendra Singh Chandel and Bhola Singh.

All these 11 MPs are from BJP. With 87 questions, Ritesh Pandey from BSP, is at the highest mark of asking questions to the government among non-BJP MPs.

MPs from Uttar Pradesh on an average participated in 25.4 debates as against a national average of participation in 21.2 debates.

Akhilesh Yadav participated only in 4 debates, a notch better than Sonia Gandhi’s participation in 1 debate.

It’s noteworthy that Pushpendra Singh Chandel of BJP participated in 510 debates and Malook Nagar of BSP participated in 139 debates, significantly above the national average.

MPs from Uttar Pradesh presented on an average 0.3 private member bills which is same as the national average.

Akhilesh Yadav and Sonia Gandhi presented no private member bills in the parliament.

Only 9 MPs from Uttar Pradesh presented private member bills in parliament. All these 9 MPs are from BJP.

It is noteworthy that Pushpendra Singh Chandel, Ajay Misra Teni and Ravindra Shyamnarayan of BJP presented four private member bills each in the parliament in this period, which is significantly above the national average