No money for farmers, but AP legislators can be pampered

The financial crunch in the Andhra Pradesh government is just an excuse to deny the farmers of their poll promise of farm loan waiver.

It seems the Chandrababu Naidu government has been on a massive splurge to benefit the MLAs and MLCs with lavish gifts to the 175 MLAs and 50 MLCs on the final day of the budget session of the State Legislature here on Friday. The Chandababu Government has been spending heavily to keep the legislators happy with free house hold appliances in their MLA quarters , sops for education of their wards, free medicare and free travel for them across the state.

Among the gifts are an Iphone-6 costing around Rs.53,500 besides other gift coupons from the APLA, and freebies from all the government departments to the legislators which is a routine practice during the budget session. The APCO, SAAP, Vijaya diary , TTD and host of other departments present gift hampers to the legislators.

At a special counter set up in the Assembly, most of the MLAs signed and took the gift. With each iPhone worth Rs.53,500 with16 GB capacity, it cost the State exchequer Rs.1.2 crore in all. This is not the first time such expensive items have been showered on legislators on the concluding day of the session. In the past, they were given laptops, tablets and i-Pads.

Although the declared goal is to keep the legislators tech-educated and give them access to all information most of them hardly use the tools . The TDP IT department had conceived drop boxes for all MLAs and MLCs to provide crucial information for use in media and also in assembly debates. But it was found that many hardly had any interest in information gathering and discussing people's issues.