Scrap MPLADS scheme

Media-reports indicate that complete funds of rupees five crores for each Parliamentarian available under MPLADS have been spent only in 35 Lok Sabha constituencies out of total 543 with West Bengal topping the list with ten such constituencies. Instead of modifying the scheme by allowing release of total fund-allocation in one instalment rather than presently twice a year, MPLADS scheme should be altogether abolished. 

 Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Parliaments and Planning Commission termed MPLADS useless and corruption-generating. A TV-sting caught Parliamentarians taking bribe to approve schemes to be funded through MPLADS. The then Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee had echoed likewise to scrap the scheme. 

Many MPs and MLAs are over-generous to fund their favourite organisations from this scheme even though such funding may have nothing to do with public-welfare. It may be recalled that trusts floated by the then Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla were generously funded by Parliamentarians cutting across party-lines from MPLADS. 

Our Parliamentarians and MLAs must have capability to get work done for public-welfare from existing administrative-machinery including wisely using RTI Act rather than needing short-cut by way of corruption-generating scheme. Already Bihar government has abolished such a scheme in the state. All such suggested reforms should be implemented both at the centre and in states.

 - Madhu Agarwal, Delhi