MPs have their way, can give Rs. 1 cr to trusts

The government has bowed to the might of members of Parliament by allowing them to allocate Rs one crore of their annual local area development to trust and societies of their choice despite evidence suggesting corruption in similar practice, Chetan Chauhan reports. The Nabcons example

Updated on: Dec 16, 2012, 08:33:13 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government has bowed to the might of Members of Parliament by allowing them to allocate Rs 1 crore (or 20 %) of their annual local area development (MPLAD) to trust and societies of their choice despite evidence suggesting corruption in similar practice adopted in past.

The Ministry of Programme Implementation and Statistics, mandated to execute works under MPLAD scheme, had imposed a restriction in March this year that a MP can allocate works worth Rs 25 lakh in registered societies and trusts in their lifetime, evoking strong reaction from 115 MPs cutting across political spectrum.

"The only restriction should be that proper accounts are kept of the expenditure and the work being done is of high quality," said a letter written by BSP MP Vijay Bahadur Singh that bears signatures of 115 MPs in a reaction to the ministry's decision.

The letter was also signed by Samajwadi chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, PL Punia of Congress, Supriya Sule of NCP, Shatabdi Roy of Trinamool Congress, A Owaisi of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, Rajeev Ranjan Singh of Janata Dal (United) and Francisco Sardinha, who also presides in Lok Sabha in absence of speaker and deputy speaker, among others. "MPs are highly responsible people and their discretion should be trusted," Singh said.

The MPs even threatened to forgo their fund if they were not allowed to utilize the funds as per their choice saying they were not government employees who are bound by rules.

Hit by the rebellion, the ministry changed the MPLAD rule earlier this month and allowed MPs to spend up to Rs one crore every year for works even in unregistered trusts and societies.

The earlier life-time restriction for MPs had been replaced by a restriction that a society or a trust would not be able to seek more than Rs 50 lakh from MPLAD in its life-time. But, it does not prevent them to form new trusts or societies and keep on getting public money from the MP.

"This is gross misuse of public money and will lead to misappropriation of funds," said Jagdeep S Chhokar, founder member of Association for Democratic Reforms, a civil society watchdog on MPs. "I believe that whole of MPLAD scheme is to make money and is unconstitutional," he added.

A Central government agency Nabcons in 2009 found out that there was a clear bias in allocating MPLAD fund to certain trusts and societies in Surat, Gujarat.

The report also said that in many areas there was no record of how the money allocated to trusts and societies was utilized, raising suspicion of corruption.

"The allocated work was being done by contractors indicated by MPs in violation of MPLAD rules," said another report of Nabcons.

A government official did not rule out the possibility of misuse but said the onus of maintaining sanctity of the rules was with the district administration while hinting at pressure to make the change.

The MPs, however, say they use the fund for betterment of society as per local needs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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