New Delhi: Rajya Sabha will bid farewell to 72 members who are retiring. Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will speak in the house Thursday to bid them farewell. Leader of the House Piyush Goyal and Leader of the Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge will also speak on the occasion. Among the 72 Rajya Sabha members, seven are nominated.
Naidu announced Wednesday in the House that Zero Hour and Question Hour will not be taken up Thursday. This is being done to enable the leaders and members speak on the occasion.
Sources said Naidu will host a dinner Thursday for all the members of Rajya Sabha at his official residence. Mementos will be presented to the 72 retiring members and another 19 who retired earlier, but could not receive the mementos.
At the dinner, six Rajya Sabha members will showcase their cultural talent, the sources said. TMC’s Santanu Sen will strum the guitar, his party colleague Dola Sen will sing a Rabindra Sangeet. On the other hand, DMK’s Tiruchi Siva will sing a Tamil song and BJP’s Roopa Ganguly a Hindi song. Ramachandra Jhangra will sing a patriotic song while NCP’s Vandana Chavan will sing a Hindi song during the cultural evening.
Senior officials of Rajya Sabha Secretariat said that the members of the House will showcase their cultural talents after a gap of 20 years on such an occasion.
Some of the members retiring in April include deputy leader of the Congress Anand Sharma, AK Antony, Subramanian Swamy, MC Mary Kom and Swapan Dasgupta while the terms of Nirmala Sitharaman, Suresh Prabhu, MJ Akbar, Jairam Ramesh, Vivek Tankha, V Vijayasai Reddy will end in June.
Among the members retiring in July are Piyush Goyal, Muktar Abbas Naqvi, P Chidambaram, Ambika Soni, Kapil Sibal, Satish Chandra Misra, Sanjay Raut, Praful Patel and KJ Alphons.