Mps Want Gas, Phone Quotas Restored

About 100 members of Parliament belonging to various parties yesterday met Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda and sought restoration of the discretionary quotas of members of Parliament for issuing out-of-turn gas and telephone connections.

Sources said that the Prime Minister gave a patient hearing, but asked them to approach the Lok Sabha Speaker P A Sangma on the issue as he had taken the decision to do away with the quotas.

The members of Parliament are also understood to have raised a demand for provision of certain perks like secretarial assistance to the members of Parliament for better discharge of their duties.

 

The group demanded that the limit of Rs 1 crore for the MPs local area development scheme should be raised to Rs 2 crore.

The members of Parliament also urged for a say in the implementation of the Centrally-funded schemes like the Indira Awas Yojana and employment assistance scheme implemented by the state governments.

They complained that the state governments did not give any hearing to the views of the members of Parliament (MPs) and implemented these schemes on partisan considerations.