Members of Parliament are never satisfied with the funds they are given under the Member of Parliament Land Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) for developmental work, but most don’t fully make use of the money they already have to help their constituencies, going by a study conducted by Public Affairs Centre (PAC).
PAC founder, Samuel Paul says an analysis of the data available on the Net clearly shows a majority of the MPs have under- utilised their MPLADS funds in the period 2004-09. "The average utilisation is just 47 per cent. When the MPs are not making use of the funds available, why do they want more ?" he asked, speaking to reporters here on Thursday. While the MPLADS fund has already been hiked to Rs 5 crore from Rs 2 crore, the MPs are now demanding it be doubled to Rs 10 crore.
"Most of the money is usually used for building community halls and asphalting roads. We will do a study to find out why these two activities receive most of the funds." Mr Paul added. Only Janata Dal (S) supremo and Hassan MP, H.D. Deve Gowda and Davanagere MP, S. G. Mallikarjunappa made 100 per cent use of the funds allotted in the years in question, while Bengaluru South MP, Anant Kumar, spent merely 24.3 per cent, according to him Besides Mr Deve Gowda and Mr Mallikarjunappa, K.H. Muniyappa, Basanagouda Patil and Bangarappa too topped the list of MPs who made good use of the funds. The five at the bottom of the list are Ananth Kumar, Venkatesh Naik, G.P. Chandanagouda, J. Prahlad Venkatesh and D. C. Srikantappa.
Among Rajya Sabha MPs, Prema Cariappa—a former Belgaluru mayor— topped the list by using 84.7 per cent of the funds and M. Rajshekar Murthy was placed at the bottom , as he merely used 0.9 per cent of the funds. Among the present lot of MPs from Karnataka, Bengaluru North MP, D.B. Chandre Gowda, Dharwad MP, Prahlad Joshi and Uttara Kannada MP, A. K. Dattatreya Hegde have utilised 100 per cent of the MPLADS funds over the last couple of years. Mr Mallikarjunappa has used up only 2.6 per cent, Chamarajanagar MP Dhruvanarayana Rangaswamy, merely 1.3 per cent and Bengaluru rural MP and former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, just 7 per cent, Mr Paul said.