After spacious official residences, the legislators of Telangana have now also got generous constituency development fund of Rs 1.5 crore each.
Even as the Opposition parties were protesting against the move of providing swanky houses to the MlAs in their respective constituencies, K Chandrasekhar Rao Government on Thursday issued a formal order sanctioning Rs 210 crore towards the constituency development fund for all the 119 MlAs and 40 members of State legislative Council.
While the Government had decided in the past to allocate Rs 3 crore as the development fund for each legislator, half of the amount for this year was being released in the first phase.
The move came on a day when the first model of the swanky houses for the MlAs was ready for the inauguration in Parkal constituency of Warangal district.
TRS MlA from Parkal C Dharma Reddy said that this will facilitate his work. “Now I will be able to visit my constituency and meet the people more often”. Against an allocation of Rs 10 million, the house in the constituency has cost only Rs 6.9 million, according to the Roads and Buildings department.
The Rs 120 crore (Rs 1.2 billion) project will cover 104 constituencies in the state where such houses cum offices will be built. The 15 constituencies in Hyderabad city were not covered by the scheme. Work was already on in 65 constituencies and these houses will be ready in next few months.
Each house will be a two storied structure. While the upper floor with three bedrooms, drawing room, dining hall, kitchen, store room and a puja room will serve for the residential purpose, the ground floor will serve as an office. Apart from an office room for the legislator, it will have other facilities like staff room, a meeting hall, a VIP lounge, a hall for the party workers and another waiting hall for the people.
The state government had come up with the idea of such a project after the legislators made a representation that they were unable to regularly interact with their constituents or stay in the constituency as they did not have any office or residence there.
Most of the MlAs were based in Hyderabad where either they have a house of their own or were allotted quarters in Old and New MlAs’ Quarters. The state government had also earmarked Rs 100 crore for constructing new quarters for the legislators in Hyderabad.
The legislators in Telangana were already among the highest paid law makers in the country after their salary including all the perks was increased to Rs 250,000 per month.
Opposition parties were in the arms against the splurging of tax payer’s money over the building of posh houses for the MlAs. BJP has lashed out at the Chief Minister saying their was no accountability on how the public money was being spent. “This is a criminal waste of tax payers’ money”, said Krishna Sagar Rao, state BJP spokesperson.