This story is from October 12, 2019

Maharashtra assembly: Nandurbar MLAs posed 1 query in 4 years

Maharashtra assembly: Nandurbar MLAs posed 1 query in 4 years
Maharashtra Vidhan Bhawan
MUMBAI: An analysis of Question Hour in the state assembly during 2015-18 has revealed a heavy bias against issues concerning the marginalised.
"Our focus was on nine low-HDI districts , and we were shocked to find their negligible representation on the floor of the House," said Medha Kulkarni of the NGO Sampark, which studied 9,835 questions raised by MLAs during 2015-18 assembly sessions.
Only one was raised from Nandurbar, the district with the state's lowest HDI. Its MLAs are Kagda Padvi, Surupsingh Naik, DS Ahire and Kashiram Pawara of Congress, and UK Padvi and Vijaykumar Gavit from BJP.
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While the reason for Mumbai topping the list could owe to its 23 constituencies-the largest for any district-experts said that tribal MLAs need to speak up. "Also, questions have to be registered online before they are asked in the assembly. Adivasi MLAs perhaps don't have good online exposure," said Kulkarni.
The survey also found that the general quality of questions was poor. "Most queries were about local-level administrative problems that need not be raised at the assembly level," she said. For instance, questions on ashramshalas for children were about encroachment by rats and snakes. Less than 10% of questions were about policy matters.
"It seems people seek out their elected representatives for petty matters and they, in turn, take it to the highest electoral collective in the state-the assembly. It would seem we get the representatives we deserve," Kulkarni said.
The common subjects repeated over and over were vacant posts, delayed projects, demand for CT scan machines, illegal construction, investor frauds, scams in district cooperative banks and river pollution. Dr Abhijit More of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (which was not involved in the analysis) said, "Many a time, MLAs who are supposed to be the voice of the people get stuck in politics. They will vociferously talk about scams to shame their political opponent, but not about livelihood. If discussions on scams yield meaningful results that make a difference to the common man, then it is wonderful, but nothing like that happens here. If marginalised people don't get represented well in the assembly, then their MLAs are not doing their job."
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About the Author
Malathy Iyer

Malathy Iyer is Senior Editor (Health) at The Times of India, Mumbai. She writes mainly on health-related subjects.

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