Political Diary

New Delhi, 26 March 2011

Den of Corruption

MPLADS OPEN LICENCE TO LOOT

By Poonam I Kaushish

Chor-Chor Mausere Bhai. This maxim held sway as the curtain rang down on the shortest ever month-long Budget session of Parliament totalling 23 sittings of both Houses on Friday last. Whereby, our jan sevaks collectively agreed to a massive increase in the MP Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS). Notwithstanding, the din and fury of allegations and counter allegations over the CVC controversy to the Wiki leaks exposure on the cash-for-votes scam. Underscoring as never before that when gold speaks all tongues are silent!

The break-neck speed with which Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced a Rs 2,370-crore bonanza for MPs by raising allocations under MPLADS from Rs 2 crore to Rs 5 crore, even as he expressed concern over sky-rocketing prices and inflation was simply breathtaking. On the facetious plea that as MLAs’ are getting Rs 2 crore it is only fair to strike a balance by raising the fund available to MPs’. Who cares that it’s the aam aadmi’s hard earned money down the political drain.

True, no one begrudges more funds to our Right Honourables to help develop their constituencies better. The Supreme Court too upheld the Constitutional validity of MPLADS in May 2010.  But the moot point is:  Has the scheme lived up to the expectations? Or has it turned into another ‘cash cow’ for our leaders?

Sadly, experience over the last 18 years since MPLADS was launched in 1993 highlights that the scheme has created more controversies and yielded little results. The sting operation in 2006 whereby seven MPs were caught seeking bribes for doling out contracts under the MPLADS and various Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) reports have pointed out that funds meant for public good are siphoned off to greedy private   pockets.

Most scandalously, two reports by the CAG in 1998 and 2001, have strongly criticised the waste and the serious irregularities in the implementation of the scheme. It found that in many States, funds were either misused, lapsed, fictitious or the unspent money wasn’t returned. Astonishingly projects not sanctioned by MPs were also executed.

Not only that. The CAG found that the District Collectors not only reported inflated expenditure figures to the Ministry but also failed to obtain utilisation certificates in respect of 11,915 works constituting 70 per cent of the works completed. And yet, the Ministry continued to release funds without any correlation to their end use. Naturally, in a country which breathes bribes wherein no work is done without palms being greased and ‘cuts’ paid what else can one expect.

In a sample audit of 106 constituencies, it was found that of a total expenditure of Rs 265 crores reported by the collectors, Rs 82 crores (31 per cent) was not incurred at all. So deep is the malaise that India’s dalit messiah Mayawati brazenly directed her MPs in 2003 to part with a part of the “commissions” they made from their MPLADS for Party coffers. She said, “Arre bhai sub miljul kar khao”.  Adding, that even the most honest MP makes Rs 5 lakh annually by sitting at home. 

Remember, Trinamool’s  singer-turned-novice MP Kabir Suman who in a tell-all in 2009 revealed, “Local leaders who already control Rs 400 crore of the panchayat samiti and zilla parishad monies, want the funds and won’t let me spend Rs 1 crore of the Rs 2 crore I receive annually on installing 44 deep tube-wells in my constituency.”

Think. An MP in connivance with the DM ensures a cut out of every scheme recommended by inflating the cost and taking kickbacks from the contractors. The babu is happy and he makes the MP happier. A smart duo nets up to a maximum of Rs one crore of Rs 2 crore and an honest duo a minimum of Rs 50 lakhs. Asserted one, it is a "kind of financial rehabilitation package for the political cadre." For their “protection”, or for other “services”. Demonstrating the urgent need to scrap the MPLADS.

Bribery and bungling apart, MPLADS has allowed legislators to become part of the executive. According to Chairman of the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution Justice Venkatachaliah, the “scheme is inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution and is against the basic tenet of democracy as it subverts the principle of separation of powers.

“To involve individual MPs to exercise any discretionary power which is within the realm of the Union Executive, in spending about Rs 800 crore annually bypassing the Union Ministry and State Government or to ask individual MPs to do something without the consent of the other MPs when all of whom can function collectively only after due deliberation, appears to be wholly outside the Constitution. There is no account, no accountability and no Parliamentary audit,” he adds for good measure.

Equally damning is that it negates our federal structure. As the NCRWC asserts there can be no place for a scheme that is inconsistent with the spirit of federalism and which “treads into the areas of local Government institutions.” According to former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, MPLADS militates against the very process of decentralisation. “It is devised to sabotage the emergence of panchayats, which were autonomous of the weight-throwing MPs and MLAs".

In the present system, MPs decide how to spend the money and funds are disbursed through the district administration. Local bodies are neither consulted nor involved in the details of execution despite Articles 243G and 243W entrusting local bodies with the powers to prepare and implement plans for economic development and social justice. Questionably, should MP’s be administering funds and determining their specific resource allocation? Doesn’t it compromise the oversight function that legislators ought to play? Who should the voter hold accountable?

Think. Astoundingly, according to the 2001 audit report over Rs 1,800 crore was “lying idle at that time and the interest earned on that amount was Rs 107 crore, whereas the Central Government was paying an interest of about Rs 200 crore on the borrowed funds”!  Clearly the unutilized amount must have increased manifold in the last 10 years given that till date the Central Government has sanctioned a staggering Rs.14,070.52 crore cumulatively since the MPLADS inception --- a sum that's higher than the annual Union elementary education budget!

Also startling though the Planning Commission had put its foot down to releasing funds for MPLADS in view of a resource crunch, the Parliamentary Committee on MPLADS asked it to explore possibilities of pruning outlays of some big schemes and instead give more funds for the scheme.

What next? Forget the increase, it is high time to have a serious rethink on continuing the scandalous MPLADS. Which has made being an MP the most lucrative and paying proposition. A Lok Sabha MP is elected for a five-year term and a Rajya Sabha for six years. At Rs5 crore a year, a Lok Sabha MP has Rs 25 crore at his disposal and his counterpart in the Rajya Sabha Rs 30 crore. In our increasingly power hai to money hai culture, this money is icing on their MP cake. Time to apply brakes to the licence to loot and scoot.---- INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)