399 MPs owe Rs7 crore for telephone bills. RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal suggests services like telephone, water, electricity, etc should be disconnected for non-payment of any single bill, like is being done in case of normal citizens
Present and former Parliamentarians have collectively run up more than Rs7 crore in telephone bills. In a response to RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal’s query, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) has revealed that 399 present and former parliamentarians have Rs7.10 crores in unpaid telephone dues.
There are six sitting members of Parliament (MPs) in the list, namely: GV Harsha Kumar with Rs2.06 lakh in dues, Ram Sunder Das owing Rs9.49 lakh, Bhakta Charan Das with Rs3.31 lakh, M Krishna Swamy with Rs3.19 lakh, Harsha Vardhan with Rs 36,774 and Narendra Budhania with Rs1.33 lakh in unpaid telephone bills. Together, they owe some Rs19 lakh.
Among the former parliamentarians featuring on this list are Chhedi Prasad, TK Rama Murthy and G Pratap Reddy. 57 of those in the list have passed away.
Former Rajya Sabha member Janardhan Jadav has the highest outstanding amount of Rs22.29 lakh, followed by Basava Raj Patil (Rs17.2 lakh) and K Mohd Khan (Rs15.28 lakh). Other big defaulters are GC Munda with Rs12 lakh in dues, MH Gohil with Rs11.6 lakh and Bahadur Singh with Rs10.5 lakh in dues.
Mr Agrawal said, “It is not clear how MTNL will recover this amount of money. Rule should be auto-deduct of all government bills from salaries and pensions of present and former Parliamentarians. No-dues certificate should be made mandatory from contestants before filing a nomination for any election. Services like telephone, water, electricity, etc should be disconnected for non-payment of any single bill, like is being done in case of normal citizens.”
.jpg "MoneyLife")
