When the Government is puzzling to get AC and DC bills cleared against the expenditure done from the MlA fund, legislators from all quarters honked together to hike the yearly allotment given to them even further.
The members from all parties including BJP raised the issue in the House on Saturday and demanded from the Government to raise the limit citing inflation and other considerations.
“It is well known that all the good works being done for the people are out of the MlA fund. But the fund has turned insufficient for us looking at the vast area to be covered and expenditure of the development works going up. The cost has doubled in the last five years and I request the Government to raise the fund up to Rs 10 crore,” said BJP legislator from Hazaribagh Manish Jaiswal prominently.
This prompted Bhawnathpur MlA Bhanu Pratap Sahi and Nirbhay Sahabadi of Giridih to join the demand. The members were also of the view that conditions put for spending Rs 50 lakh for toilets and Rs 1 crore for irrigation projects in the constituency should be revisited and looked into perspective.
“There is no scope for spending fund for irrigation facilities in urban areas. This ceiling should be done away with,” said Jaiswal. An MlA gets Rs 4 crore under local area development fund out of which Rs 1 crore has to be spent on building irrigation facilities. It was raised in 2015 from Rs 3 crore which was continuing since way back in 2004-2005.
Responding to the overwhelming demand Speaker Dinesh Oraon said that Rural Development Minister Neelkanth Singh Munda and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Saryu Roy would make a consultation with Chief Minister Raghubar Das on the issue before resetting the development fund.
However, the MlAs got a kind of disappointment when the Chief Minister in his reply did not respond positively. “The MlA fund is not going to bring you back in the Assembly next time instead it is over all infrastructure development done,” responded the CM.
Often the fund has to be stopped since the respective district administration fail to furnish utilisation certificates require against the works done under MlA local area development scheme. later the Government even went on making mandatory the audit of the fund which would require online filing of the information and their verifications.