Vacate or pay up | Expense for one MP on tariff alone per month would amount to over Rs two lakh
The MPs (Members of Parliament) staying at the Ashok Hotel, a star hotel in the national capital, has finally got a feel of the government's austerity measures. They have been told either to vacate or pay from own pocket.
The MPs will have to vacate by the end of the budget session – May 8 for Lok Sabha and May 13 for Rajya Sabha, sources said on Tuesday. The government has made it clear that such accommodation will be made available to MPs only during the session and that too if the state guest house has no room.
Sources said the stay of the MPs in the hotel, where the tariff was around Rs 7,000 per night, was a burden on the public exchequer. The MPs retain the room even when Parliament was not in session and they are away in constituency. The rooms then are used by their personal assistants or other staff, it was learnt.
After the letter was sent to around 30 members, some of them complained that the houses allocated to them were yet to be vacated by the earlier occupants, others said their houses were not ready, while a few said the alterations were not carried out to their specifications.
The Parliamentary House Committee headed by BJP MP Arjun Meghwal had decided to shift the MPs staying in ITDC hotels to state guest houses. Sources said that several of the 35 MPs who were staying at Ashok Hotel had moved out.
As of now on the official Lok Sabha website, the address of around 30 MPs is Ashok Hotel. This includes MPs from all parties, including BJP, Congress, TDP, Shiv Sena, LJP and TRS. The MPs are from Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Punjab, Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir.
The government had made temporary arrangements for MPs' stay at ITDC hotels like Samrat and Janpath besides Ashok. After reports of rising expenses of MPs' stay at the hotels, which put a question mark on the government's austerity measures, the urban development ministry and the House Committee has been on its toes to address the issue.
Earlier, over 100 MPs were booked at the hotel but the number came down as most of them were allotted houses in the city.
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