‘Come again’: PM Modi bids farewell to 72 retiring Rajya Sabha members

Bidding farewell to 72 retiring Rajya Sabha members, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday advised them to take their experience in “all four directions” of the country. He added that sometimes, experience has more power than academic knowledge.

“We have spent a long time in this Parliament. This House has contributed a lot to our lives, more than we have contributed to it. The experience gathered as a member of this House should be taken to all four directions of the country,” the prime minister said in the Rajya Sabha.

“Our RS Members have a lot of experience..sometimes experience has more power than academic knowledge.. We will say to the retiring members ‘come again’,” he added.

Some of the members retiring in April include deputy leader of the Congress Anand Sharma, A K Antony, Subramanian Swamy, M C Mary Kom and Swapan Dasgupta while the terms of Nirmala Sitharaman, Suresh Prabhu, M J 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 K J Alphons. 

While some union ministers and BJP leaders will be renominated by the ruling party, there is no clarity on some renomination of the Congress members, some of whom are of the G-23 which has been critical of the party leadership.

News agency PTI quoted sources saying that Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu will host a dinner Thursday for all the members of Rajya Sabha at his official residence, where mementos will be presented to the 72 retiring members and another 19 who retired earlier who could not receive the mementos.