76% in 15th LS to 87% now: How MPs have attended the House as its marking goes digital

The Budget Session will be held from January 28 to April 2, with Parliament remaining in recess from February 13 till March 9.

While the MPs have welcomed Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla’s announcement about the new attendance system – made on the sidelines of the All India Presiding Officers’ Conference in Lucknow last Tuesday – data compiled by the PRS Legislative Research shows that the members’ attendance has been rising in the Lower House over its last four terms.

From the MPs’ average attendance rate (or the share of total sittings attended) of 76.2% in the 15th Lok Sabha (2009 to 2014), the current 18th Lok Sabha, which is now in its second year since being constituted in June 2024, recorded their average attendance of 86.9% till the winter session of 2025. The 16th Lok Sabha (2014 to 2019) saw the members’ average attendance of 80%, before dipping to 78.9% in the 17th Lok Sabha (2019 to 2024).

While the average attendance figures may be skewed by outliers, including a handful of MPs who attend close to zero sessions, the median attendance (which measures the mid-point attendance figure among all MPs) stood at 81% in the 15th Lok Sabha, 80% in the 16th, 83.2% in the 17th, and 91.4% in the ongoing 18th Lok Sabha.

An increasing number of MPs have recorded 100% attendance. In the 15th Lok Sabha, just four Congress MPs attended every sitting, of whom three were first-timers. In the 16th Lok Sabha, there were six such MPs – including four from the BJP, and one each from the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) – all first-timers. In the 17th Lok Sabha, there were just three such MPs, all from the BJP and first-timers.

The current Lok Sabha has seen 29 MPs with a 100% attendance record – 13 from the BJP, eight from the Congress, six from the Samajwadi Party (SP), and one each from the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and CPI(M-L) Liberation – that include 19 first-time members.

Over the last four Lok Sabha terms, the number of the MPs clocking an attendance below 50% has consistently dropped – from 42 in the 15th Lok Sabha to 33 in the 16th and 17th Lok Sabha, to 17th in the current House. The number of MPs registering an attendance rate below 80% has similarly declined – it was 240 in the 15th Lok Sabha, 199 in the 16th, 220 in 17th, and down to 95 in the existing House.

A state-wise analysis, excluding single-MP states and Union Territories (UTs), shows that in the current Lok Sabha, Arunachal Pradesh’s two MPs have the highest attendance rate at 98%, followed by Rajasthan’s 25 MPs and Delhi’s seven MPs at 96% each. The lowest attendance has been recorded by Jammu and Kashmir’s five MPs at 59%, followed by West Bengal’s 42 MPs and Punjab’s 13 MPs at 72% each.

In the 15th, 16th and 17th Lok Sabhas, the highest attendance was recorded by the MPs, respectively, of Manipur at 98%, Manipur and Delhi at 92%, and Goa at 94%. The lowest attendance was recorded by the MPs from Chhattisgarh at 60%, J&K at 55%, and Chhattisgarh at 47% in the 15th, 16th and 17th Lok Sabhas, respectively.

An analysis of the parties with more than one MP shows that the only the RLD has a 100% attendance record in the current Lok Sabha, followed by CPI(M-L) Liberation at 98%, Janata Dal (United) and SP at 95% each, BJP at 94%, Janata Dal (Secular) at 92%, and the Congress at 90%. In all, the MPs of 17 parties have an attendance rate above 90%.

The attendance in the 15th Lok Sabha was led by the CPI at 89% with the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) at the bottom with 14%. In the 16th Lok Sabha, Apna Dal (Soneylal) had the highest attendance at 91%, while the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) had the lowest attendance at 53%. The 17th Lok Sabha was again topped by the AD(S) and Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) at 88% each, with the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) finishing at the bottom at 55% each.

Attendance systems

The MPs are required to mark their attendance in order to receive their daily allowances. Under the current rules, the Speaker, the Prime Minister, ministers and Leader of the Opposition (LoP) are not required to sign the attendance register, though every other legislator is required to sign into a physical register kept at the entrance of the Lok Sabha chamber. A member’s attendance is also marked if they speak or cast a vote in the House.

While the latest move requires MPs to scan their thumbprints on digital consoles at their designated seats, it is not the first recent change in the attendance system.

In 2020, when the Parliament sessions were held during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Lok Sabha Secretariat introduced an app designed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) for the MPs to enable them to mark their attendance from their phones without having to interact with a physical register in accordance with the social distancing norm.

In late 2024, ahead of the first Winter Session of the current Lok Sabha, the MPs were given the option to mark their attendance on an electronic tablet with a digital pen, as part of Parliament’s push to go paperless.

Ahead of the Monsoon Session last year, the Lok Sabha installed a “multi model device (MMD)” at each MP’s seat through which the members could record their attendance by either using a “multimedia card”, entering a code into the MMD, or scanning their fingerprints.

At the time, the introduction of the MMDs had sparked a row, with Congress MP Manickam Tagore questioning the attendance exemption for the PM and Union ministers. “If attendance marking is about transparency and accountability, why are the Prime Minister and ministers exempted? Shouldn’t the PM lead by example instead of being above the process?” Tagore asked, adding that “digital tools are only as good as the intent behind them”.