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| ACs, laptops, cars for MLAs | | |
BL KAK
NEW DELHI, JUNE 12: Jharkhand is one of India's poorest States. It is official: Jharkhand is cash-strapped State. Yet, after laptops, legislators in the State have been sanctioned air-conditioners whose cost will be borne out by the public exchequer.
Aalamgir Aalam, Speaker of the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly, has ordered the State government to get ACs installed at the official residence of all the 82 MLAs. Aalam justified his decision citing the changing climate of the State capital, Ranchi — which was once a hill station and the summer capital of Bihar — and the effect of scorching heat on the health of people's representatives.
Last year, each MLA was presented a laptop worth Rs80,000, so that they “keep in touch with their constituency”! Moreover, their salary and constituency development fund was doubled from Rs11,000 and Rs10 million respectively. And they were given half a million rupees each to buy a car of their choice.
Significantly, more than half of Jharkhand’s population lives below the poverty line against the national average of 29 per cent. The State’s literacy level, another index of backwardness and poverty, is 54 per cent against the national average of 65 per cent.
But the MLAs, according to reports from Ranchi, are jubilant. One of them said that if Jharkhand's 12 Ministers are entitled to air-conditioned toilets, MLAs might as well sleep in a cool bedroom. But airconditioners and laptops pale into insignificance before the fleet of 32 official cars — including four bullet-proof vehicles — at Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda's disposal.
Koda, who boasts of the largest fleet of cars among Indian Chief Ministers, has been allocated 16 cars in Ranchi and eight each in Dhanbad and Dumka, the two other cities of the eastern State. According to the chief secretary, it was not possible to send cars from Ranchi to Dhanbad or Dumka, which Munda frequently visited in the State helicopter at short notice.
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