Government Bows Down to MP’s on MPLADS

Under pressure from MP’s, the government has withdrawn the restriction imposed by the Ministry of Programme Implementation and Statistics in March 2012 that an MP can allocate works worth Rs.25 lacs to registered societies and trusts in their lifetime and has allowed them to allocate Rs 1 crore (i.e., 20 %) of their annual Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) funds to trust and societies of their choice.

The MP’s were up in arms against the restrictions. A letter written by Vijaya Bahadur Singh, MP (BSP), and signed by 115 other MP’s says: “The only restriction should be that proper accounts are kept of the expenditure and the work being done is of high quality.”

Francisco Sardinha (Congress), P.L. Punia (Congress), Supriya Sule (NCP), Shatabdi Roy (Trinamool Congress), Mulayam Singh Yadav (BSP), Rajeev Ranjan Singh (Janata Dal -United) and A Owaisi (All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen) are among the signatories to the letter.

NABCONS, a Central Government agency reported in 2009 that there was distinct bias in allocating MPLAD funds to some trusts and societies in Surat. The report added that often there was no record of the utilisation of the funds allocated to trusts and societies.

Yet, yielding to the vociferous protest, the the Ministry of Programme Implementation and Statistics has amended the MPLADS rules allowing MP’s to spend up to Rs. one crore every year for works even in unregistered trusts and societies of their choice.

The life-time restriction imposed in March 2012 has been replaced by the restriction that a society or a trust cannot avail itself of more than Rs. 50 lakh from MPLADS funds during its lifetime. But, the restriction does not prohibit them from setting up new trusts or societies to continue getting MPLADS funds money from the same or different MP.

Jagdeep S Chhokar, founder member of Association for Democratic Reforms, said: “This is gross misuse of public money and will lead to misappropriation of funds.” He added: “I believe that whole of MPLAD scheme is to make money and is unconstitutional.”

We  share the concerns expressed by Jagdeep Chhokar.

We think the ideal solution is to scrap MPLADS altogether.

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