MPs in 5-star comfort on trip to monitor wasteful spending

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Sun, Jun 15 12:40 AM
Sample this: Nearly a dozen MPs some with spouses and others without check into a five-star hotel. They are on an official visit: a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Public Accounts.
Their job: to take stock of wasteful expenditure and pass strictures against extravagance and enforce financial discipline. Calculate this: The rack rate of a double room begins at Rs 20,000-odd per night and stretches unto Rs 30,000.
On the eve of the three-day meeting, as many as 13 MPs had checked in and others were expected. Some were on the premium club floor where the base price of an executive suite is Rs 40,000 per night.
Add to that the 10 per cent luxury tax plus expenditure on food and sundries and the figure will cross Rs 50,000 per night. Given that it is a weeklong tour, the cost per MP will work out to be over Rs 2 lakh for a standard room and around Rs 5 lakh for the premium club, excluding air travel, cost of conference facilities and other things.
On June 12, the Public Accounts Committee held its first meeting in Mumbai. This will be followed by meetings in Goa and Bangalore, which will conclude on June 18.
While this committee was busy scrutinising "wasteful expenditure" at Rs 50,000 per head per night, there was another meeting taking place in the same hotel. At this Parliamentary committee meet, seven MPs were taking stock of the Children's Film Institute, Khadi and Village Industries, and the Employees Provident Fund.
While some of the visiting MPs were in deluxe rooms, others stayed on the club floor. Public Accounts Committee Chairman Vijay Kumar Malhotra told Hindustan Times that it was "cheaper" for MPs to travel than to call officials to Delhi.
Reiterating that austerity was a concern, he said Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee would take a view on this. On whether it was necessary to stay in five-star hotels and in such luxury, Malhotra said, "all depends on accommodation availability".
He said that special care had been taken to ensure that the accommodation (in this case a five-star hotel) was near the airport to save on travel time and expense. When Hindustan Times quizzed Hanan Mollah, Chairman of the Parliamentary committee on papers laid on the table of the House, of the Prime Minister's concern over wasteful expenditure, he shot back: "Austerity does not mean you lock yourself and sit at home.
Or stop Parliament work? We travel only when necessary and tours have been reduced, but we cannot stop them totally.".