Half of MPs sitting on development funds

Federal home minister among senior leaders on list, data shows With 52 MPs, Uttar Pradesh tops the list of states with zero use of MPLAD money, followed by Maharashtra and Bihar. Parliamentarians from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal do better.

Ayear after they took office, 298 of the 542 members of the 16th Lok Sabha have not spent a single rupee from the Rs50 million ($780,000 or Dh2.86 million) that is set aside annually for them to develop their constituencies, according to data made available to IndiaSpend.

Most ministers of the government figure in the list of members of parliament (MPs) who have not yet utilised their MP Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) funds, as the money made available to them is called, reveals an analysis of the data (until May 15, 2015) from the ministry of statistics and programme implementation.

Among those who have thus far ignored their MPLADS funds: Home Minister Rajnath Singh (Lucknow), Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister Ananth Kumar (Bengaluru South), Law Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda (Bengaluru North), Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Kalraj Mishra (Deoria) and Water Resources Minister Uma Bharati (Jhansi).

Modi’s constituency

Others who boast zerospending include Congress president Sonia Gandhi (Rae Bareli), veteran BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi (Kanpur) and Samajwadi Party Chief Mulayam Singh Yadav (Azamgarh).

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency Varanasi has utilised 16 per cent of the Rs50 million.

The current Lok Sabha has 281 members from the BJP and 44 from Congress, the main opposition party. With 52 MPs, Uttar Pradesh tops the list of states with zero use of MPLAD funds, followed by Maharashtra and Bihar. Parliamentarians from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal do better with most recommending works under the scheme.

Drinking water, sanitation, electricity, roads and community shelters are among things MPs can spend their annual fund on. Delivered in tranches of Rs25 million, the MPLADs money is meant to fund things that fall in between the administrative cracks.

If the money is not spent in one year, it can be spent during another. Funded by the union government since it began 23 years ago, MPLADS works are recommended by an MP, approved by the district collector and implemented by local authorities. The collector must ensure the work is completed within a year.

In August 2014, two months after the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance won the general elections with the “achche din” (good times) slogan, Modi and Rural Development Minister Birender Singh urged parliamentarians to use MPLADS funds to build toilets, in line with Modi’s programme to clean India. The same month, the BJP president Amit Shah called on members of both houses of parliament to set up committees that would ensure MPLADS money was put to good use.

Many ignore appeals, especially from large states

Despite these appeals, much of the MPLADS money is unspent, IndiaSpend’s analysis reveals.