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Delhi: The members of parliament MPs who have failed to pay their telephone and electricity bills on Thursday came under the scanner of the Delhi High Court which asked various government agencies to submit details of the law makers' dues and action taken to recover them.
What steps taken?
A bench headed by Chief Justice A P Shah directed the NDMC, MTNL and ITDC, among other agencies, to file their response on what action they had taken against MPs and former law makers who allegedly owed lakhs of rupees to them.
"Give us the details of the amount and tell us the mode of recovery applied by each agency. If there is something lacking then we would take proper action," the bench said while granting two weeks' time to them to file the details.
The court was hearing a PIL seeking direction to government agencies to take action against MPs and other politicians who had not paid house rent, telephone bills, electricity bills or charges for hospitality and other services enjoyed by them at government-owned hotels.
Dues are huge
The counsel appearing for the Lok Sabha Secretariat informed the court that with the aim of recovering dues from an MP an amount from their salary is deducted. But, he added, in several case the dues are huge and it would take long time to recover the entire amount.
State-run telecom company MTNL also pointed out that it was facing difficulty in recovering dues from MPs and former law makers as they tend to file petitions in different parts of the country against the recovery process.
MPs file petitions
"Some MPs are filing petitions all over the country and for us it is costlier to handle the court cases than the total amount of the dues," counsel appearing for the company said.
He added the MPs usually pay their dues before elections as they need to get no-dues clearance from all agencies before filing nomination papers.
The bench after hearing the contentions asked the government agencies to suggest measures that could be adopted to recover the dues from e defaulters. Agency
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