The Hindu : New Delhi News : Dues recovered from MPs

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Oct 14, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Dues recovered from MPs

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, OCT. 13. The Lok Sabha Secretariat today informed the Delhi High Court that it had started making deductions from the salaries of 62 sitting Members of the Lower House to clear their pending telephone and electricity bills to the Mahanagar Nagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) here and the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC).

Counsel for the Lok Sabha Secretariat, Maninder Acharya, informed a Division Bench comprising Justice B.C. Patel and Justice B.D. Ahmed that the dues above Rs. 3,000 to the MTNL and Rs.1,000 to the NDMC for power supply on the part of these MPs were being recovered by making deductions from their salaries from this month.

She submitted that of the total above-mentioned MPs, 52 had to clear their electricity bills and 11 telephone bills.

However, she informed the Court that the Lok Sabha Secretariat Rules did not permit deduction from the pensions of the former MPs, a good number of whom also owed to the two public utilities for using their services when they were Members of the House.

She further stated that these MPs had been informed about the deductions being made from their salaries to recover the dues from them under the two heads. They had also been requested to co-operate as well as informed that the deductions would continue till the dues in toto were recovered.

The Bench directed the NDMC and the MNTL to take legal action against the former defaulting MPs as well as against those sitting MPs whose pending bills for the two services could not be recovered through deductions from their salaries.

The Bench directed the Rajya Sabha Secretariat to file a similar action-taken report to the Court.

The directions came on a Public Interest Litigation by Krishak Bharat, a non-governmental organisation, in 1998 seeking directions to the public utilities to recover their dues from the former and the sitting Lok Sabha and Rajya Members.

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