Height of irresponsibility
July 24, 2009: The Hindu
Pleas made in Parliament by several MPs for an increase in the annual grants they get under the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme, to create “permanent assets¶ at their discretion, are specious. The demand is for Rs.5 crore, up from the existing Rs.2 crore. In fact, in a report tabled in the Lok Sabha in December 2008, the parliamentary committee on MPLADS recommended an enhancement to Rs.10 crore. The budgetary grants for the scheme, which was first announced in Parliament in December 1993 by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and launched in 1994, have been impossible to justify. An increase to Rs.5 crore will entail an annual outlay of Rs.4,000 crore as against Rs.1,600 crore now. Over the years, MPLADS has drawn adverse criticism from statutory bodies and public-spirited organisations and individuals. In a 2002 report, and in an ongoing review in several States, the Comptroller and Auditor General found a number of indiscretions — from delay in sanctioned work to diversion of funds to purposes beyond the charter of MPLADS. In 2003 came allegations that a Chief Minister had asked party MPs to divert some of the funds meant for constituency development to the coffers of the party. A 2005 sting operation by a television channel, which caught four MPs on camera discussing commissions to hand out contracts under MPLADS, discredited the scheme further. Recommending the suspension of the delinquent MPs, a parliamentary committee merely proposed that the government should revise the guidelines to plug loopholes.
Notwithstanding high-sounding professions, MPLADS as well as the copycat MLALADS (Members of the Legislative Assembly Local Area Development Scheme) are schemes for patronage and the wastage of public funds. In April 2005, the National Advisory Council, chaired by Sonia Gandhi, suggested that the “MPLADS scheme should be dispensed with and these funds should directly go to panchayats and municipalities for the same purposes.¶ In 2007, the Second Administrative Reforms Commission headed by Veerappa Moily recommended abolition of both MPLADS and MLALADS on the ground that they “seriously erode the notion of separation of powers, as the legislator directly becomes the executive.¶ Influential sections across political parties have a vested interest in the scheme, with only the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Bhim Singh’s Kashmir National Panthers Party consistently opposing it. Several public interest petitions challenging MPLADS are before a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court. Under these circumstances, accepting the demand for raising the annual grant to Rs.5 crore will be the height of irresponsibility.
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