With Rajya Sabha seats increasingly becoming a rehab exercise for Men Fridays and defectors alike, tribal and backward districts come out as the losers in this brand of politicking. Result: Equitable representation of the State in the House of Elders becomes a casualty. Districts starving of development couldn’t avail the MP local Area Development (MPlAD) fund they fervently needed.
Consider this. When only two, Mayurbhanj and Sundargarh coming under Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) districts, were being represented in RS by Sarojini Hembram and Dilip Tirkey, a high of seven sitting members represent non-TSP districts. Bhupinder Singh is representing Kalahandi — a partial TSP district. Similarly, three sitting members of a total ten from Odisha represent three high focus districts out of 18 such in State. In contrast, 50 per cent of the sitting members represent economically vibrant districts. This shows elders from State choose districts on political considerations rather than on development need parameters as expected while selecting a district under RS MPlAD guidelines, though it’s elected MP’s discretion.
Worse, vibrant districts like Khurda, Cuttack and Jagatsinghpur get a bonus of RS members besides a lok Sabha member each. Few Elders choose TSP or high focus districts. Result: Odisha fails to see the real utilisation of 22.5 per cent of RS MPlAD fund for tribals and SCs mandated under the MPlAD guidelines. Here is an instance of how TSP districts lose out to their better counterparts.
Rayagada and Nabarangpur were formerly represented by late Illa Panda (1992-98) and Baghban Majhi(1994-2000) and these districts have an unspent balance of over Rs1.19–1.17 crore. Post-expiry of their term, none of newly elected RS members from BJD deemed it fit to adopt the districts. Result: As per MPlAD guidelines, unspent amount in respective TSP districts would be equally divided between newly elected RS members. Consequently, it has been a loss to Rayagada and Nabarangpur as lAD funds would see diversion to their better-off counterparts.
Though, it’s a different matter that 55th Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in 15th lok Sabha criticised Odisha for saddling with high unspent balance of RS MPlAD. Significantly, data with Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation till June 2015 reveals that Odisha, though has only 4 per cent of total RS MPs, account for a whopping 6 per cent (Rs99 crore) of the total Rs1,562 crore unspent balance nationally. Power to distribute unspent amount lies with State Government, PAC observed. Interestingly, unspent balance of former RS members totals to a whopping Rs57 crore. Aggregated unspent balance in two above said TSP districts, one partial TSP district (Keonjhar) and high SC populated district Ganjam amount to over Rs10 crore.
Tragedy is these districts have no inheritor elected RS member. This huge amount would be shared by their better-off cousin districts. Experts at Nabakrushna Choudhry Institute of Development Studies (NCIDS) see this a worrying trend as most new RS members show preferences to well-off districts like Cuttack and Khordha. Result: Khordha has blessings of 2 RS and 1 lS MP, Cuttack has one each against one each lS MP for Koraput, Nabarangpur and Ganjam.