Rajya Sabha chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar bats for debate on freebies, says will discuss with govt, Opposition

“On placatory mechanisms, on appeasement, which is often known as freebies, this House needs to deliberate…because the country grows only with capex being available. Electoral process is such that these have become electoral allurements and thereafter the governments that came in saddle found themselves very uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that they wanted to revisit their thoughts,” Dhankhar said. “There is an urgent need for a national policy so that all investments of the government in any form are used in a structured manner for larger good,” he added.

Dhankhar said he would confer with the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the House on the issue.

Dhankhar then went on to speak about the disparity in pensions and perks for Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) and Members of Parliament (MPs).

“Our Constitution provided for legislature, MPs, MLAs, but did not have uniform mechanism. So, you will find legislatures in several states give perks and salaries to members of the Assembly, much beyond members of Parliament, and even the pension variation for a former member of the Assembly is on a scale of 1 to 10,” Dhankhar said.

He added that these were issues where legislation would help the politicians, the government, and the executive. “It will ensure high quality of investment,” Dhankhar said.

Before Dhankhar’s call for a debate on freebies, SP’s Ram Gopal Yadav raised the issue of hiking the MPLAD funds, in which Rs 5 crore is allocated to MPs for undertaking developmental works. For Lok Sabha MPs, these funds are used in their constituency, and Rajya Sabha MPs can use funds in districts of the state where they are elected from.

Yadav suggested that the government should increase the MPLAD funds to Rs 20 crore per year, not levy Goods and Services Tax, and establish a technical cell that will oversee estimate and quality control.

Speaking on subsidies, Dhankhar said that they should be transferred directly into the accounts of farm sector beneficiaries, for instance.

Subsidies, if required in areas like the farm sector, should be direct, and that is the practice in developed countries, he said. “I checked with the US mechanism. The US has 1/5th of farm households as our country but the average income of US farm households is more than the general income of US households, and that is because the subsidy to the farmer is direct, transparent, without intermediary,” Dhankhar added.