It is an open spat between two MPs from Congress—one from Lok Sabha and the other from Rajya Sabha. 

Jairam Ramesh tweeted saying he welcomed the government’s decision to temporarily suspend the MPLADS (MP Local Area Development Scheme) for the years 2020-21 and 2021-22. Under the scheme, all members of both houses of the Parliament get ₹5 crore a year to develop their constituencies.  

“I have been arguing for long that the approximtely ₹7,000 crore given to MPs and MLAs annually for development works should be used as  corpus for state funding of elections,” Jairam Ramesh, Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha, tweeted, in response to the Centre’s tweet mentioning the suspension of the scheme, so that the money could be used to fight the coronavirus outbreak.

 

Karti Chidambaram, son of former finance minister and Congress MP in Rajya Sabha, P Chidambaram, replied to Jairam Ramesh’s tweet saying, “this can only be stated by someone who has never faced a direct election and has no constituents to answer to.” 

Jairam Ramesh has always been a Rajya Sabha MP.  

Congress Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram, Shashi Tharoor, has re-tweeted Karti Chidambaram’s tweet. 

When reached by  BusinessLine , Jairam Ramesh refused to comment on the junior Chidambaram’s tweet.

However, the tweeterati is abuzz over the exchange, with most people siding with Jairam Ramesh and criticizing Chidambaram. Several have pointed out that the former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, from the Congress party himself never faced an election. Others have pointed out that the MPLADS money could be used to buy test kits for coronavirus; one calculated that 12 crore kits could be bought for ₹7,000 crore.  

A few, however, supported Karti Chidambaram’s view. One of them on twitter, who goes by the name Dikshit Doshi, said that a MP should not have to run to NGOs or Trusts for small works in his constituency, adding that the MPLADS funds are all well accounted for. 

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