Sachin's MPLAD fund lapses, he suggested no projects for suburban Mumbai

Rajya Sabha MP Sachin Tendulkar, it appears, had no ideas for development projects for his native suburban Mumbai, for not only  has his Rs 5-crore kitty under the MP Local Area Development Fund (MPLAD) fund for 2012-13  lapsed but an equal sum is set to lapse at the end of the current financial year, 2013-14, as the former cricketer has not recommended any project for the utilisation of the funds.   [caption id=“attachment_1372161” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] AFP[/caption] Tendulkar was nominated as a Member of Rajya Sabha by the then President Pratibha Patil in April 2012. A Member of Parliament is entitled to an MPLAD fund of Rs 5 crore every year for local development projects. Rajya Sabha MPs have, in the past, spent their MPLAD funds on developing parking lots, beautifying seafront promenades, developing parks and other amenities. According to the Rajya Sabha website, Tendulkar who was entitled to  Rs 10 crore under the MPLAD scheme in his two years as a member of the RS until now, had selected Mumbai Suburban district as the location to spend his funds. However,  the government did not sanction any sum from his MPLAD funds as he appears to have not proposed any work to utilise these funds. Incidentally, Tendulkar declined an official government bungalow in Delhi citing that it would be a waste of ’taxpayer money’. That was in June 2012. Also, the cricketer-MP has not asked any questions in the Upper House of Parliament. Apart from Tendulkar, yesteryear actor Rekha and industrialist Anu Aga were also nominated to the Rajya Sabha by the then President Pratibha Patil in April 2012. Like Tendulkar, Rekha too has not utilised the MPLAD funds. She has not even selected the district where the funds were to be spent. Industrialist Anu Aga has fared better, having recommended works worth of Rs 3.47 crore. The same amount has also been spent in Pune, the district chosen by her. Earlier this year, Milind Deora, union minster of state for Information Technology and Shipping, had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urging him to streamline or replace the MPLAD fund scheme to enable skill training for youth to avoid any misuse of these funds. “Due to the large of size of a constituency, the complexity of infrastructure related project’s execution and difficulty of overseeing such projects, it causes mis-execution, and in some cases, the potential to misuse these funds through contracts to favorable vendors and other means. At the end of it, the constituents remain dis-satisfied and feel the MPLADS money is not well spent, rightly so,” states the letter.