E-Paper
Sampark report: Covid-19 has MLAs asking more questions on health
MLAs have been asking more questions in the 15th state legislative assembly, which reflects the increased intensity of Covid-related health issues underlined by the fact that the percentage of health-related questions has seen a sharp rise, claims Mumbai-based NGO Sampark’s report
MLAs have been asking more questions in the 15th state legislative assembly, which reflects the increased intensity of Covid-related health issues underlined by the fact that the percentage of health-related questions has seen a sharp rise, claims Mumbai-based NGO Sampark’s report.
The NGO advocates people-centred governance published its study report titled ‘Performance of the MLAs during legislative assembly sessions in the shadow of Covid’ on Thursday.
A total of seven state legislative assembly sessions were held from March 2020 to April 2022, in the looming shadow of Covid. Out of these, three budget sessions were selected for this study. Sampark has studied 1,592 starred questions during this period.
According to the report, 778 questions were asked in 2020, 372 in 2021 and 708 in 2022. In the 14th legislative assembly, the health-related questions were only 5%, which doubled to 10.41% in the current session.
While the health-related questions saw a rise, questions related to women and children were only 2% and two MLAs asked questions on child marriage practices.
In the last session, 166 were health-related questions, of these 3% were related to Primary Health Centre (PHC). In the current session, the number went up to 12%. The maximum number of health-related questions were asked from the Mumbai Suburban district followed Nagpur and Pune districts. Kolhapur, Hingoli, Bhandara, Washim, Parbhani and Nandurbar districts did not ask a single question,stated the report.
There were 76 education-related questions, which include fee hike and 12 related to educational infrastructure which include repairs of classrooms among other things. Another 12 questions pertained to the corruption in the education system. A total of 12 districts did not ask a single education-related question, according to the report
Of the eight questions pertaining to sports, one was about designing a policy to ensure that high quality sportspersons are created while the rest of the questions pertained to building new sports complexes, funds for the same and appointments of sports teachers.
Similarly, questions related to irrigation, human resources, power supply, subsidies, tribals, PDS, crime also remained at a mere 2%.
However, the expectation that districts having low Human Development Index (HDI) would ask more questions was unfortunately not proven true by the elected representatives. The total number of questions asked from all the nine districts with low HDI (196) was almost half of the total number of questions asked from Mumbai, Mumbai Suburban and Thane districts put together (388).
Priority subjects:
Infrastructure: 176 questions
Health: 166 questions
Agriculture: 125 questions
Water: 96 questions
Environment: 81 questions
Illegal activities: 78 questions
Party-wise performance
BJP: 53.8% questions
Shiv Sena: 15.6% questions
Congress: 15.2% questions
NCP: 8.5 % questions
