Despite frequent news reports of several loopholes in the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS), a New Delhi Post investigation, based on previously undisclosed official documents, reveals how the Union government repeatedly resisted, diluted or legally challenged multiple attempts to reform the scheme over the past decade, even as parliamentarians across party lines continued to complain about poor implementation, lack of transparency and inadequate funding. Three reform bids in five years, by a deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha, a constitutional oversight body and sitting MPs, were each blocked, challenged or quietly buried.
Over the past eight months, nearly a dozen Members of Parliament from diverse political parties have asked the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) multiple questions about an issue that appears to be a shared concern across party lines: increasing the annual entitlement of funds available under the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS). The two most recent questions on the issue were raised by two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) parliamentarians in early February this year — Lok Sabha MP Vijay Baghel from Durg, Chhattisgarh, and Rajya Sabha MP Sumitra Balmik from Madhya Pradesh.
A closer reading of their questions suggests that the framing of Baghel’s multi-part query was almost rhetorical. Sample the first question he asked: “whether the current annual allocation of Rs 5 crore under the MPLADS is insufficient for the comprehensive development of the Parliamentary Constituencies, especially those with large geographical areas comprising 8-9 Assembly segments and predominantly rural populations?” The second part of the same question built on the first: “whether the limitation of funds often deprives the general public of various critical and essential development works?”
While Baghel’s questions may appear rhetorical, a New Delhi Post review of five questions raised by 11 Members of Parliament since July 2025 on the same issue shows that they, too, shared a common concern over the inadequacy of funds available under the scheme. Their actual texts differed in style and framing, but all 11 parliamentarians wanted to know whether the Union government had any plans to revise the annual entitlement under the scheme.
The responses these questions received from the MoSPI were also broadly similar. The ministry maintained that the MPLADS was not intended to “substitute” or “duplicate” existing government schemes through which developmental works are implemented. It was designed to complement them by providing viability-gap support, specifically for last-mile connectivity and essential local infrastructure.
This is the latest instance demonstrating how parliamentarians, including those from the ruling BJP, have repeatedly sought changes in the functioning of the MPLADS, only to encounter resistance from the statistics ministry.
While the episode narrated above concerns a single issue raised through parliamentary questions, a review of previously unreported official documents accessed by the New Delhi Post shows how, over the past decade, the statistics ministry either resisted or responded in an apparently token manner to at least three significant interventions aimed at improving the on-ground implementation of the scheme.
Two of these attempts were initiated by parliamentarians aligned with the BJP-led ruling alliance at different points in time, while the third was a separate intervention by the Central Information Commission (CIC) seeking to make the scheme’s implementation more transparent.
First Attempt, 2018
The first major reform attempt originated not in Parliament but in a citizen’s RTI application. One Ram Gopal Dixit had filed requests seeking details of MPLADS works recommended by Hathras MP Rajesh Diwakar in areas under the North Eastern Railways. He was seeking not only the details of public works recommended by Diwakar but also their implementation status, identities of those who implemented them, among other things.
The railways ministry’s information officer transferred Dixit’s application to the statistics ministry, whose information officer replied that the information was held by district administration officials and was not available centrally.
Central Information Commissioner M Sridhar Acharyulu sharply criticised this state of affairs. In separate orders passed in September and October 2018, Acharyulu issued a series of directions and recommendations. Two of these were especially consequential and quickly became contentious.
First, he recommended the creation of a “legal framework” for MPLADS that would impose elaborate transparency obligations on parliamentarians and other implementing entities. This included bringing MPs under the ambit of Public Authorities under the RTI Act, thereby enabling citizens to seek information directly from them.
Second, he directed the online disclosure of details relating to specific public works recommended by MPs, including names of beneficiaries and reasons for delays, after collecting such information from district administrations responsible for implementing the scheme.
Acharyulu’s language was particularly critical of the conduct of some MPs who, he claimed, “abused” MPLADS by spending the entirety of available funds towards the end of their five-year term to derive political benefit.
These CIC orders created significant ripples within the central government. Previously undisclosed documents accessed by the New Delhi Post reveal that the statistics ministry sought a legal opinion from the law ministry as well as the Department of Personnel and Training, the nodal ministry for RTI implementation. The statistics ministry was weighing its legal options and conveyed this to Harivansh in February 2019.
Documents further show that the law ministry later advised the statistics ministry that “…the directions of the CIC appear to be not only against the provisions laid down under the RTI Act, which provides for setting up of State Information Commissioners, but also in conflict with the division of powers under the federal structure established by the Constitution of India.” The statistics ministry was therefore advised to challenge the CIC orders before the Delhi High Court. It promptly complied and filed an appeal.
After hearing the matter over several years, the Delhi High Court in 2024 directed that the CIC’s strong remarks accusing MPs of “abusing” MPLADS for political purposes be “expunged”. However, the court also ordered that the direction to “publish MP-wise, constituency-wise and work-wise details of the funds be retained.”
In early March 2023, well before the High Court delivered its order, the Union government introduced a revamped online dashboard containing some of these details. However, as of April 2026, even a cursory review of the dashboard shows that all details mandated by the CIC and the High Court have still not been fully disclosed to the public.
Second Attempt, 2019
The second significant push for reform came from within Parliament’s own leadership. In early 2019, Harivansh Narayan Singh, Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, wrote to the Minister for Statistics and Programme Implementation, D V Sadanand Gowda. The letter followed a field visit undertaken by Harivansh with fellow members of Parliament’s MPLADS committee, which the journalist-turned-parliamentarian chaired at the time. The committee’s objective was to assess the on-ground implementation of the scheme.
After returning from the visit, Harivansh wrote a detailed letter to Gowda on January 7, 2019, outlining his observations. “After I assumed the charge of the Chairman of the Committee on MPLADS, Rajya Sabha, I have noticed many problems plaguing such a useful scheme at every level. During the Committee’s visit to the North-Eastern states and West Bengal in November 2018, several issues such as lack of communication and coordination between the state and district authorities; delay in sanction and execution of MPLADS works, etc., were brought to the attention of the committee,” he wrote. “You will appreciate that most of the time the MPs are singularly blamed for poor utilisation of their MPLADS funds, although their role under the scheme is limited to merely recommending the works.”
Harivansh then urged the minister to “reflect upon the huge amounts of public money being held up without being spent properly on the works under this scheme, which could have been put to public use”.
To substantiate his concerns over poor implementation of MPLADS, the Janata Dal (United) MP enclosed findings from the committee’s field visit as well as results from multiple audits conducted by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India over the years. He also summarised directions issued by the CIC, the Supreme Court and third-party audit findings relating to the scheme.
Selected excerpts from this letter, as well as another communication written by Harivansh to fellow parliamentarians on July 1, 2019, regarding improvements to MPLADS, were first reported by The Indian Express in June and July 2019. However, the response from Union government functionaries to the first letter appears not to have been made public until now.
The New Delhi Post has accessed a letter written by Union minister Sadanand Gowda to Harivansh on 12 February 2019. In the letter, Gowda responded to all the concerns raised by the Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman in January. “The Ministry has accorded utmost priority to minimise the encumbrances caused by slow utilisation of MPLADS funds, non-settlement of accounts of ex-members and delays in release of pending instalments. These have already been taken up with the State/UT nodal departments for necessary action,” Gowda wrote. “The Ministry is in agreement with the observations of the committee (sic.) that resolution of these issues is imperative for improving execution of the scheme.”
Responding to Harivansh’s references to critical findings from past audits by the CAG and the Programme Evaluation Organisation of the Planning Commission, Gowda stated that his ministry had initiated physical audits by third parties of public works implemented under MPLADS in select districts. The process, he added, would later be replicated on a wider scale.
On the Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman’s reference to a CIC order asking the Union government to establish a legal framework for regulating MPLADS and to treat Members of Parliament as Public Authorities under the Right to Information Act, Gowda rejected both recommendations. Since MPLADS was administered through guidelines and the “administrative, financial and technical” rules of state governments, this “obviates the need for the establishment of a legal framework,” he wrote.
He further asserted that the recommendation to procure information from state authorities and treat parliamentarians as Public Authorities “is not in consonance with the provisions of the RTI Act”.
Seven years have passed since Gowda assured Harivansh that the implementation of MPLADS would improve. While some changes have indeed been introduced, many of the problems highlighted by the Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman continue to persist.
Delays in the execution of public works recommended under the scheme, as well as inadequate information regarding the progress of implementation, remain recurring complaints raised by parliamentarians in both Houses of Parliament every year.
Third Attempt, 2020
In March 2020, T R Paarivendhar, then a Lok Sabha MP from Tamil Nadu, introduced a private member’s bill seeking to replace MPLADS. Called The Parliamentary Constituency (Lok Sabha) Development Bill, 2020, the proposal came from the influential education-sector entrepreneur who has, at different times, aligned with both the BJP and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).
At the time he drafted the bill and sought its introduction, Paarivendhar was a DMK MP. Put simply, the bill sought to convert MPLADS from a scheme into an Act of Parliament. Since its introduction in December 1993, MPLADS has functioned only as a scheme.
Apart from proposing a legal framework, an idea earlier recommended by the CIC, the bill’s most consequential provision sought to increase the annual entitlement of funds from Rs 5 crore to Rs 7 crore per parliamentarian. However, both the law ministry and the statistics ministry rejected the proposal.
A note prepared on 30 June 2020 by Arpit Anant Mishra, Assistant Legal Adviser in the Department of Legal Affairs under the Ministry of Law and Justice, explained the rationale. “Since, the present bill is merely emphasising the allocation of more funds to the Members of Parliament (Lok Sabha) for the purposes of MPLADS; which, in the majority of cases, concern subjects mentioned in List II (State List) of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution. As such, the competency of the Parliament to make laws on the subjects of the State List may not be in consonance with the Constitutional mandate,” Mishra wrote.
If the law ministry objected on constitutional grounds, the statistics ministry expressed more practical, and therefore financial, concerns. “At present, the feasibility of exploring the proposal to revisit the annual entitlement of MPLADS funds does not arise in view of the challenging circumstances being faced by the government in addressing the economic and health impacts of COVID-19,” an internal brief prepared by the ministry noted. It also pointed out that the MPLADS itself had been suspended during the COVID years of 2020-21 and 2021-22.
More than four years have passed since the Tamil Nadu MP attempted to introduce the bill. Since then, Paarivendhar has contested the 2024 general election on a BJP ticket. Meanwhile, demands from parliamentarians across both Houses seeking an increase in the annual MPLADS allocation appear only to have intensified.
(Akshay Deshmane is a Delhi-based environmental journalist)
