Congress legislators have edged out their counterparts from the ruling BJP and Shiv Sena to emerge as top performers in an assessment of the performance of MLAs from Mumbai.
Congress legislators have edged out their counterparts from the ruling BJP and Shiv Sena to emerge as top performers in an assessment of the performance of MLAs from Mumbai.
While Amin Patel of the Congress, who represents Mumbadevi in the Assembly had the top score of 78.25 per cent in the Mumbai MLA report card released by NGO Praja Foundation on Tuesday, Ram Kadam (BJP- Ghatkopar West) was at the bottom of the heap.
Patel was also the top scorer in the 2016 evaluation. Interestingly, four of the five top performers are from the Congress, with Patel being followed by Kalidas Kolambkar (Naigaon), Aslam Shaikh (Malad West), Muhammed Arif (Nasim) Khan (Chandivali), Varsha Gaikwad (Dharavi) and Sunil Prabhu (Shiv Sena-Dindoshi).
According to the report, which relied on data-based information and assessment of the peoples' perceptions about elected representatives, Kadam is ranked lowest at number 32, with a 41.96 per cent score, followed by Tukaram Kate (Shiv Sena- Anushaktinagar), Tamil Selvan (BJP- Sion Koliwada), Ashok Patil (Shiv Sena- Bhandup West) and Ramesh Latke (Shiv Sena- Andheri East).
The four legislators from Mumbai, namely Prakash Mehta, Vidya Thakur, Vinod Tawade and Ravindra Waikar, who are ministers, were not considered in the exercise. However, the average score secured by these MLAs fell to 60.5 per cent in 2017 from 65.1 per cent in 2016 while the quality of questions was just 38 per cent. The average score for attendance in the legislature by MLAs also fell marginally to 9.19 from 9.68.
"The performance of MLAs has actually come down... from 79.07 per cent to 74.52 per cent for the top 20 percentile, 54.31 per cent to 46.45 per cent for the bottom 20 percentile," noted Nitai Mehta, founder and managing trustee, PRAJA.
The assessment sourced information on attendance, criminal records, questions asked and quality of questions through RTI applications. A survey by a market research group covered over 20,000 citizens for parameters based on perceptions like perceived performance, accessibility and corruption.
In 2017, the perceived corruption stands at 38%, which is higher than 36% in 2016, which led to quality of life slipping from 70% in 2016 to 66% in 2017. The legislators were not ranked in 2015 as it was the first year of their new term.
"As perception of corruption goes up, the quality of life goes down. Perception is a very important factor of what is happening at the grassroot level," explained Mehta, adding that in 2014, perception about corruption by MLAs was highest at 57%, during which the perception about the quality of life was the lowest at 60%.
Out of 36 MLAs from Mumbai, 12 (33%) MLAs had chargesheets filed against them in 2017 while 50% (18 legislators) have criminal cases.
In the previous term, MLAs in their second year (2012) asked a total of 11,049 questions, while in the ongoing term, MLAs in their second year (2017) have asked only 6,199 questions. However, the questions asked rose from 4,343 in 2016 to 6,199 in 2017.
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