Only 70% MPLAD funds utilised in Delhi from 2009-13

Congress MP from North East Delhi Jai Prakash Agarwal has best spent the funds allocated to him under the Member of Parliament Local Area Development while his South Delhi counterpart Ramesh Kumar has barely utilised the money for development of his constituency.

According to data of Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation released for 2009-2013, only 70 per cent of Rs 93.75 crore that was made available to Lok Sabha MPs in Delhi under the MPLAD fund, was utilised, leaving around Rs 28.80 crore unspent.

Delhi has seven constituencies and all of them are represented by Congress members.

Mahabal Mishra from West Delhi and Jai Prakash Agarwal have been able to perform comparatively better than their counterparts, but none of the MPs could manage to spend 100 per cent of the amount allotted.

While Agarwal, the former president of Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC), has spent Rs 16.69 crore out of Rs 18.39 crore available with him, Mishra brought Rs 10.26 crore to use out of total Rs 13.31 crore.

Kumar is the worst-performing MP when it comes to the utilisation of MPLAD funds. He managed to spend only Rs 3.71 crore till date out of a total sum of Rs 10.32 crore allotted to him by the Union government.

The residents of the areas of Kumar's constituency allege that basic infrastructure is in deteriorating state. "Not in our knowledge any such fund has ever been used. The locality lacks parkings, places for garbage to be dumped and proper urinals, and many stretches have missing lamp posts," says Ashish Batra, a resident of Chhattarpur area which is under Kumar's constituency.

MP from East Delhi Sandeep Dikshit was allotted Rs 7.89 crore in total but only Rs 3.67 crore was used in development of the area.