Taking a serious view of the failure of former MPs to pay their telephone and electricity bills, the Delhi High Court on Wednesday issued show-cause notices to the respective political parties. The court also issued notice to the Election Commission seeking its suggestion on means to collect the arrears from the defaulting politicians.
Issuing notices to the Congress, BJP and host of other parties, a division bench of Chief Justice A P Shah and Justice S Muralidhar sought the response by January 14. The court was hearing a PIL alleging that some former MPs vacated their official residences when their tenures got over without paying the electricity, water and telephone dues. The petitioner also alleged that some of them had availed services in ITDC hotels and failed to clear the bills. Earlier, the HC had sought to know from ITDC, NDMC and MTNL how it plans to recover the money from the political parties after the defaulting MPs did not respond to the notices issued by the public bodies for payment of pending dues.
Appearing for the public bodies, a counsel submitted the agencies will have no difficulty in recovering money from sitting MPs but it is a problem in case of those who are no longer in the Parliament and have dues running into lakhs of rupees each.
Arguing on behalf of ITDC, counsel H S Phoolka said that dues of over Rs 8 lakh were pending against 244 former MPs. He said ITDC has initiated execution proceedings against 37 of them.
NDMC’s lawyer informed the court that unpaid bills of MPs added up to Rs five crore while MTNL recounted a figure of Rs six crore. The PIL was filed by NGO Krishak Bharat in 1998.
Source:-The Times of India Delhi 4 December 2008 P.2
For any query:- legalpoint@aol.in
Source:-The Times of India Delhi 4 December 2008 P.2
For any query:- legalpoint@aol.in
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