SC upholds constitutional validity of MPLAD

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MADHU AGRAWAL

07 May, 2010

It refers to Supreme Court upholding constitutional validity of 'Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme' (MPLAD Scheme). the controversial scheme costing the nation 1600 crores annually has many loopholes.

IT REFERS to Supreme Court upholding constitutional validity of ‘Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme’ (MPLAD Scheme). It is surprising that the controversial scheme costing the nation 1600 crores annually was in news when a sting caught some members of Parliament taking money to approve schemes funded by their annual quota of money under MPLAD scheme. Even the then Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chaterjee rightly advocated for scrapping the scheme.

Many MPs are over-generous to fund their favourite organisations for their projects from this scheme even though such funding may have nothing to do with public-welfare. It may be recalled that trusts floated by family-members of the then Election Commissioner Navin Chawla (now Chief Election Commissioner) were found to be generously funded by MPLAD allocation of Parliamentarians from ruling party. Our Parliamentarians must have the 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!