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Journalism of Courage
A Committee of Parliament on MP Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) has asked the Planning Commission to find necessary resources for the programme even if it means cutting the size of other national programmes. Under the MPLAD scheme,the government provides each member of Parliament Rs 2 crore a year to develop his or her constituency.
The Planning Commission had earlier rejected a demand by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) it administers the MPLAD scheme to more than double the corpus available to each MP to Rs 5 crore from Rs 2 crore. It had told the Ministry that given the resources made available by the Ministry of Finance for Plan funding,there was no scope to spare extra money.
The Plan panels reply to the Ministrys proposal was prior to the May 6 judgment of the Supreme Court that upheld the constitutional validity of the scheme.
An official who did not wish to be quoted told The Indian Express that the Rajya Sabha Committee of Parliament on the MPLAD scheme broached the issue of increasing the scheme corpus when the Planning Commission was presenting an update recently.
When the Plan panel reiterated its argument that it could not spare extra funds,the committee was not amused. It asked Planning Commission Secretary Sudha Pillai to consider pruning fund outlays of a number of big-ticket schemes to make available necessary resources for MPLADS. This has been conveyed to the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission.
At Rs 2 crore an MP,the total annual outlay under the MPLAD scheme is estimated at Rs 1,580 crore for 2010-11. Increasing the amount provided to every MP to Rs 5 crore will require the government to set aside approximately Rs 3,500 crore for the programme. While it does provide MPs that much more money,it reduces the Central assistance to states by an equivalent amount.
