Guj Assembly need to develop app for MLAs' questions and their replies, recommends ADR

Ahmedabad, June 4

A report released by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP) has recommended that the Gujarat Assembly need to develop an application wherein questions asked by the legislators and their replies can be searched.

As per the report, the 14th Assembly has held 10 sessions with 141 days of work in the last five years.

The Gujarat Assembly has a total of 182 seats, out of which four are lying vacant. These four constituencies are -- Bhiloda, Unjha, Dwarka and Khedbrahma.

The report further pointed out that a total of 38,121 Starred Questions( in which answers are desired to be given orally on the floor of the House during the Question Hour) and 10,224 Unstarred Questions (written reply is desired) were asked during nine sessions of the Assembly.

Among Starred Questions, out of 26 departments, Judiciary and Parliamentary affairs & Climate Change Department received lowest questions. Whereas Agriculture and Co-operation, Industries and Mines, Home, Panchayat and Revenue are five departments that received highest questions during five years.

For Unstarred Questions, lowest numbers of questions were related to Climate Change Department whereas the highest number of questions were linked to the Home, Agriculture, Revenue, Health and Narmada got highest number of questions.

Out of 38,121 Starred Questions only 600 were answered in the house, that constitute 2 per cent whereas 4,800 (32%) Unstarred Questions were answered in the house.

Similarly, under the Member of Legislative Assembly Local Area Development (MLA LAD) Fund Scheme, under which every MLA can recommend or suggest development works worth Rs 1.5 crore in her or his constituency.

In Gujarat, under the MLA LAD scheme, works or projects costing over Rs 1,004 crore were announced during 2017-2022, of which works worth Rs 849.64 crores were approved and 677.5 crores were spent on them till March.

In tribal districts, out of total 252 crore funds available with MLAs, works of Rs 230.37 crores were sanctioned. However only Rs 177.40 crores were spent.

The report also suggested that 95 per cent out of 182 MLAs participated for less than 50 times during the last 5 years in any discussions, despite their attendance in the state Assembly. Out of which 36 per cent participated less than 10 times.

The report also recomnded that there should be separate web portal for disclosing MLA LAD Scheme expenses where in sectoral as well as constituency-wise data can be seen on dashboards. There should be comprehensive guidelines for kind of work to be recommended under MLA LAD scheme, implementation mechanism, review for its progress, if work could not be started, then reason for same, reason for under-utilisation etc.

The attendance of the member of the state Asembly should also be displayed in the form of dashboard.