The Rajya Sabha will bid farewell to the 72 retiring members and Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the House on Thursday. Leader of the House Piyush Gayal and Leader of the Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge will also address the gathering and bid farewell to the 72 members, including seven nominees.
Naidu announced in the House on Wednesday that Zero Hour and Q&A would not be accepted to enable leaders and members to speak at the event. Sources said that a dinner will be hosted for all the members of Rajya Sabha at its official residence on Thursday, where 72 retired members and 19 others who had earlier retired who could not accept the memento will be given souvenirs.
At the dinner, about six Rajya Sabha members will showcase their cultural talents, sources said. TMC’s Santnu Sen will play the guitar, his teammate Dola Sen will perform Rabindra Sangeet, sources said, adding that DMK’s Tiruchi Shiva will sing a Tamil song and BJP’s Rupa Ganguly will sing a Hindi song.
In the cultural evening, Ramchandra Jhangra will sing a patriotic song and Vandana Chavan of NCP will sing a Hindi song. This personal performance will be followed by a chorus. Senior officials of the Rajya Sabha Secretariat said that the members of the House would showcase their cultural talents at such national events every 20 years.
Among the members who retired in April were Congress deputy leaders Anand Sharma, AK Antony, Subramanian Swamy, MC Mary Kom and Swapan Dasgupta and Nirmala Sitharaman, Suresh Prabhu, MJ Akbar, Jairam Ramesh, Vivek Tankha and V Vijayasai Reddy. Will end in June. Members retiring in July include Piyush Goyal, Muktar Abbas Naqvi, P Chidambaram, Ambika Soni, Kapil Sibal, Satish Chandra Mishra, Sanjay Raut, Praful Patel and KJ Alphonse. Although some Union ministers and BJP leaders will be re-nominated by the ruling party, there is no clarity about the reshuffle of some Congress members, some of whom are from the G-23, which has criticized the party’s leadership.
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