MPs, please pay your bills

Court issues notices to various political parties over their MPs’ dues

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Wednesday issued notices to various political parties over a number of former MPs’ failure to pay pending telephone and electricity bills running into millions of rupees.

A division bench headed by chief justice Ajit Prakash Shah and Justice S Muralidhar issued notices to the respective political parties as well as the election commission and sought their responses by January 14, the next date of hearing.

The Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited, the India Tourism Development Corporation Limited (ITDC) and the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) submitted fresh affidavits before the court and expressed their inability to collect pending dues for electricity, telephone, and water from a number of former MPs. 

According to the affidavit, the MTNL and the NMDC are yet to recover respectively Rs50 million and Rs30 million from the MPs.

In its affidavit, the ITDC said the outstanding bills totalling Rs8 lakh are pending against the former MPs.

The court action came on a public interest petition seeking a direction to government agencies to take action against such former MPs and other politicians who had not paid house rent, telephone bills, electricity bills or charges for hospitality and other services enjoyed by them at government-owned hotels.

The court had earlier asked the government agencies to compile a party-wise list of the names of the defaulter former MPs.