Travel details of MPs to be available online

A submission in this regard was made by the Lok Sabha Secretariat before the Central Information Commission which was hearing the plea of an RTI applicant who had sought the details from the House without success.

The exercise has been undertaken on CIC directions to the Secretariats of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha to place travel and other details of MPs in public domain.

Greater Noida-based Wing Commander (retd) B N P Singh had sought details of travel bill reimbursement and daily allowances for MPs for last three years but the Secretariat said it would disproportionately divert its resources as the information is voluminous in nature.

Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra agreed with the reply given by the Secretariat and observed that there were more than 500 MPs in the Lok Sabha which would have undertaken numerous journeys during the period of three years.

"Unless the desired details are maintained centrally in a compiled form, collecting this information for each one of them under separate heads, as prescribed by the appellant, would be a highly time consuming task and has clearly the potential to divert the resources of the Lok Sabha secretariat," Mishra said.

The Lok Sabha Secretariat has informed that it is currently undertaking a project to upload all such details in their web site and that this would be completed in a time bound manner in a short while, Mishra said in his order.

"It is good to know that the efforts are already underway. We can only urge that this exercise is completed at the earliest and the entire information is uploaded in the Lok Sabha Secretariat website before the end of this financial year," Mishra said.