BANGALORE: Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy on Thursday conceded that lack of rules has resulted in government officials running up huge bills on the mobile phones given to them for official use

He told Marithibbe Gowda (Congress) during Question Hour in the Legislative Council that till now the policy has been to provide mobile phones to officials at certain levels, depending on the need, in each department or government organisation. In the Secretariat, secretaries and higher-level officials have been provided with cellphones, apart from all the Ministers.

Exceptions have been made in some cases for other officials depending on the duties they have to perform. There is a ceiling of Rs. 3,000 a month for officials and Rs. 5,000 a month for Ministers.

Mr. Marithibbe Gowda was joined by other members, including M.P Nadagouda (JD-U), in pointing out that phone call rates have come down drastically in the past few years.

Dr. Nadagouda wondered how the combined bill of Ministers for the entire year came to Rs. 2.63 lakhs, while the State Government Secretariat spent Rs. 9.02 lakhs. The bill for the Resident Commissioner's office in New Delhi's Karnataka Bhavan for four months was a whopping Rs. 2.63 lakhs.

During a reply to a question on the Government's policy on hiring retired lecturers as visiting faculty, several members observed that the Government is thinking twice about increasing the honorarium of teachers to Rs. 5,000 a month, but is not even concerned about the phone bills of officials, all of which might not be official.

`Set limit'

Dr. Nadagouda suggested that the phone bills for the past few months of all the officials be called for and an average worked out, on the basis of which a limit has to be drawn.

Mr Kumaraswamy said he will consider all the suggestions to effectively curb the misuse or overuse of mobile phones by officials.

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