Upper house with good number of richest billionares, including 51 MLAs as crorepaties in Uttarakhand

The forty percent of the population of the country is still under poverty line and about seventy percent of the population of rural India or suburban areas is still below middle class standards incessantly struggling hard to cope with the sky rocketting prices, agrarian complexities, distress, acute corruption and relentless struggle for survival.

There are umpteem problems of malnutrition, school drop outs, suicides of farmers and widening of the gap between the rich and the poor day by day with negligible few accumulating the wealth and economy of the 80 % population.

Under such circumstances if 90% of the parliamentarians of the upper house are crorepaties and similarly the legislatures of various states including of the poor and developing states, it sounds shocking and anguishing and gives the unambiguous impression that our pious parliament and state assemblies where actually the underprivileged and the economically deprived classes of the country would have been represented by the grass root nominees or MPs and MLAs unfortunately are being represented by the richest of the rich of the country.

The recent survey of the NGO called ADR, Association for Democratic Rights about 90% of the elected MPs of the upper house in parliament hailing from the ruling BJP, Congress, SP or BSP are all billionares / crorepaties and one such Rajya Sabha MP having the total worth of about more than 4 thousand crores never lost the election of upper house who travels more than 7 months abroad in a year.

Jaya Bachchan of Samajwadi party who has been re elected this time as well has the asset worth 1001 crores and RS MP of BJP Sajid worth of 850 crores is running a 3000 crore annual turnover company. Everybody know that multi millionaire Vijay Mallaya who’d dupred consotium of Indian Banks worth of several thousand crores was also the Rajya Sabha MP before he fled away.

There are umpteen such examples. Sounds interesting and ironical that our parliament has become a sought of privilege for these richest law makers. There have also been myriad examples of the law makers multiplying their income and worth by several hundred percent after becoming MPs or ministers at the centre and in the states.

Though there are hundreds of such instances of rich law makers representing themselves in state legislatures and parliament but if we take the case of just an 18 year old state of Uttarakhand suffering from the fiscal deficit of over 44000 crores about 51 lawmakers out of total 69 are crorepaties with more than 10 MLAs holding the asset and wealth of more than 10 crores and the rest rich by 1 to 10 crores.

What is allegedly surprising about these lawmakers is the fact that majority of them literally had nothing when the state of Uttarakhand came into existence 18 years ago from now. As if this was not enough the salaries of these MLAs are being further increased as the bill in this regard has been approved by the state cabinet and being brought in the legislative assembly for being passed unanimously as the BJP is in more than absolute majority in the 69 member assembly with 57 MLAs.

The present salary and other perks of the Uttarakhand MLA is 157000 per month. In addition, every lawmaker in Uttarakhand acknowledges coupens worth Rs three lakhs every year for rail and air travels for him and his family with two free mobiles with 15000 Rs every month for meeting the phone expenses including cashless treatment in any private hi profile hospital including interest free annual 8 lakh rupee loan for house building and purchase of vehicle.
SUNIL NEGI