Uttar Pradesh MPs in the dock for taking parliament allowance

An RTI activist has put a couple of Uttar Pradesh MPs in the dock for having charged daily allowance for attending parliament on days when no business was actually transacted in the institution.

Akhilesh Saxena, local coordinator of India Against Corruption (IAC), Friday lodged an FIR with the police here accusing BJP's Lucknow MP Lalji Tandon of availing the special parliament attendance allowance for 22 such days in 2010, when his own party did not allow parliament to function.

Other Lok Sabha members to face similar FIRs were BJP's Varanasi MP Murli Manohar Joshi, Ghazipur MP Radhey Shyam and Samajwadi Party's Allahabad MP Reoti Raman Singh.

According to Saxena: "It was against an RTI query that we were told about suspension of all parliament proceedings for as many as 22 days between Nov 10 and Dec 13 (2010). However, on further inquiry we learnt that barring 143 MPs, all others had taken the special allowance for those days at the rate of Rs.2,000 per day."

He said: "Meanwhile, the drain to the exchequer on account of suspension of parliamentary proceedings is of the order of Rs.25.94 crore."

The functioning of parliament was paralysed by the opposition which had been holding agitations and demonstrations against the government’s alleged involvement in multiple scams.