As fallout of the controversy over the distribution of expensive gifts to the legislators during the Budget session of the Bihar legislative Houses, the Government decided not to allow any department to distribute gifts in 2017. But the BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi who had raised hue and cry over the gift policy failed to return the goodies due to technical snags on Monday.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who neither took any gift during his membership nor supported the practice, has expressed his unhappiness over the display of the goodies being handed out to the lawmakers and said, “The recent controversy will give me a strong excuse to ban this practice from next year.”
On Monday, the day before the closure of the House for Holi and other leaves, senior BJP leader and leader of Opposition in the Upper House Modi came loaded with suitcases, mobile phone and microwave oven — which he received during the ongoing session courtesy various departments — to return them. He put up about half a dozen trolley bags, one oven and one mobile phone but no official of the legislative council was ready to take them back. “We are only supposed to handover the gift coming from various departments but not authorised to take them back if any member want to return it after accepting,” one staff said.
Modi said he wrote a letter to the CM asking him to discontinue the gift tradition and also instruct the officials to take back the gifts he wants to return.
Nitish said the gift policy was very old and he saw it in 1985 when he came as MlA first time. He remembered that the Education Department then had given a good brief case to the legislators. “But I never appreciated the practice of putting up the cartons of the gifts inside the A.ssembly with members being distributed in full view of media and others. A better practice would have been if these gifts were delivered at the legislators’ houses,” he said.
Most of the departments maintaining the decades old tradition distribute trolley bags the day of the presentation of the budgetary demands of the department. However, some departments have started gifting mobile phones and tablets and education department this time gave microwave oven to all the members. The recipients of these goodies are 243 members of the Assembly and 75 members of the legislative Council or the Upper House.
“I was against this practice from the very beginning but could not implement the ban in view of the overwhelming view of the legislators of all the parties. But now this practice will be banned,” he said. He also recalled that two years back he had ordered for distribution of the packets of organic potato grown in his home district Nalanda to all the legislators to promote this variety of potato.
A couple of days back Modi had decided to return the gifts and leader of opposition in Assembly Prem Kumar and State BJP president Mangal Pandey, a member of the Council, had also toes his line. Modi on Monday said some MlAs of his party have also conveyed their decision to return the gifts.
However, Modi’s possessions were kept outside his chamber in the Council as nobody came forward to take them back. This reminded the BJP leader of an old incident. He recalled that in early nineties when the then Speaker Ghulam Sarwar had distribute gold plated wrist watches to the members. Modi said he wanted to return the expensive watch but could not due to technicalities so he had gifted the watch to one orphanage.