Lok Sabha Elections 2024

April 13, 2024 12:09 am | Updated 10:52 am IST - Chennai

Nearly 75% of the allocated funds to the 39 Members of Parliament (MPs) in Tamil Nadu under the Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) from 2019 to 2024 (excluding the COVID years) have not been utilised so far, according to the data of Union Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.

Notably, there is also a shortfall in the allocation from the Centre by 44.64% to all the MPs in the State, revealed the data.

The information was provided to Dayanand Krishnan, a Chennai-based GIS consultant, under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

The Ministry stated, “The annual entitlement for a Member of Parliament, under the MPLAD Scheme, is ₹5 crore. Further, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, MPLADS was suspended from April 6, 2020, to November 9, 2021, and no funds were allocated to the scheme for the financial year 2020-21. For the balance period of FY 2021-22, i.e., from November 10, 2021, to March 31, 2022, ₹2 crore was allocated under the scheme for each Member of Parliament.”

The release of funds is subject to fulfillment of fund-related criteria and submission of respective documents by district authorities as per the MPLADS Guidelines, 2016.

The reply said, each MP will not be required to wait for the actual fund to be released by the Ministry as they will be allocated annual drawing limits at the beginning of each financial year, subject to certain conditions.

“In this case, the total allocation must arrive at ₹663 crore, but, as seen in the data, only ₹367 crore was awarded - a 44.64% shortfall,” Mr. Krishnan claimed.

The total expenditure amounts to over ₹93 crore, which implies that the unspent amount is ₹274 crore — which is roughly 75%, he added.

The maximum allocation is for Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham (DMK) Chennai South MP T. Sumathy, (alias) Thamizhachi Thangapandian (₹14.7 crore), and the least allocation is for Arani MP M.K. Vishnu Prasad of the Indian National Congress (INC) (₹4.9 crore).

Communist Party of India (Marxist), Madurai MP S. Venkatesan had spent the most funds for several projects (₹6,39,67,008).

As per data, no expenditure was listed under the Chennai Central and Vellore Parliamentary constituencies. The incumbent Chennai Central MP is Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s Dayanidhi Maran and in Vellore, it is D.M. Kathir Anand of the same party.

The data revealed that work was not completed in 23 districts, including all three parliamentary constituencies in Chennai, Coimbatore, Pollachi, Tiruppur, Tiruchi, Theni, Chidambaram (SC), Thoothukkudi, Vellore and Sriperumbudur.