After election to Parliament, our representatives become entitled to certain amenities which are intended to enable the Members of Parliament to effectively perform their duties and responsibilities. We, the people of India, pay for all these amenities ------ a salary of Rs 50,000 per month, rent free residential accommodation in prime locations in the nation's capital, free water, free electricity, free telephone calls, free business class air travel, free first class rail travel, constituency allowance etc etc.It has been estimated that if monetary values are imputed to all the 16 components of an MP's package, then an MP's annual cost to the public exchequer is a little less than Rs 50 lakhs!
If you earned roughly Rs 50 lakhs a year, would you still want a Ration Card that entitles you to buy wheat and rice and kerosene and sugar from Fair Price Shops ? Our MPs do, it seems ----- for the convenience of the Members of Parliament, a Sub-Office of the Delhi Rationing Department is provided in the Parliament House so that the MPs can obtain Ration Cards.There's also an L.P.G. Service Counter and a branch of Kendriya Bhandar for the sale of essential commodities.
A privileged lot, our MPs ! The tax payer would be well within his rights to ask whether the MPs conscientiously perform the role assigned to them in a democratic nation. Do they attend the Parliament when it is in session? Do they participate in Parliamentary debates and discussions and thus contribute to law making? Do they ask questions and through other means such as Notices and Motions call the attention of the government to matters of public interest?
The answer is a resounding No. To give a couple of examples -----in the recently concluded Monsoon session of the Parliament, the Lok Sabha was scheduled to work for 156 hours and the Rajya Sabha for 130 hours. However, the actual productive time was 104 hours in Lok Sabha and 81 hours in Rajya Sabha. If we look at the statistics related to Question Hour, only 59 of the 500 questions raised were answered in the Lok Sabha and 65 out of 500 questions raised were answered in the Rajya Sabha.
But wait, there is worse to come. Recently, many of our MPs have been arrested on charges of corruption ----Suresh Kalmadi, A Raja, Kanimozhi, Amar Singh, to name a few.Interestingly, they continue to remain eligible for all the amenities that they were were availing of prior to their arrest.
If a Public Servant who is a Government Servant is arrested for having committed any offence and remains in custody for 48 hours or more, he stands suspended from office, and his salary and allowances get reduced to half immediately.If an MP, who is also a Public Servant, is arrested for having committed an offence and remains in custody for 48 hours, should he not stand suspended from Parliament and his salary and allowances curtailed? Hypothetically speaking, an MP could get arrested shortly after he gets elected. For the whole term of 5 years then, he will draw full salary and other benefits even if criminal proceedings against him have been initiated in the competent court.
One could argue that a person's salary and allowances as an MP should only be disallowed if he gets disqualified as an MP. Well, the law says that a person gets disqualified as an MP only if the court convicts him of the offence for which he was arrested, and his appeals against such an order of conviction are set aside by the higher courts. The criminal justice system being heavily over burdened by cases, this could take several years ! So not only does the MP draw full salary and allowances and other benefits during his tenure as an MP, he also gets to enjoy all the pensionary benefits, notwithstanding the fact that a criminal case against him is plodding its way from the lower court to the High Court and finally the Supreme Court.Surprisingly, the law does not even provide for recovery of the salary and allowances that he has already drawn if the MP is disqualified upon conviction for a criminal offence.
Its time that we, the people, demanded that the Representation of the People Act, 1951 be amended ----- to provide for curtailment of the salary and allowances if the MP's performance is not satisfactory, or if he gets arrested for having committed an offence.
For more details on the amenities of MPs, please click on this link
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