The Hindu Business Line : <I>Pay hike to MPs</I><I> </I>

A hike in the allowances and perks to MPs seems to be in the offing. The reaction from members of the public, randomly interviewed by TV channels, has been caustic.

Sadly, those elected to State legislatures and Parliament suffer from such an abysmally poor image that the thought of paying them anything at all for the disorderly behaviour and violent scenes witnessed on the floors of the legislatures with disturbing frequency upsets many.

Adding to the anger is the entry into legislatures and increasingly into the State and Central Cabinets of persons indicted for crimes of a grave nature, leave aside misappropriations of public funds in hundreds of crores of rupees. There have been any number of strictures by the Supreme Court on named MPs and ex-MPs overstaying in official accommodation, defaulting to the extent of crores of rupees in the payment of rent, water, electricity and telephone charges and otherwise misusing their perks.

There is no doubt truth in the claims of some MPs that while the unruly scenes get disproportionate publicity, the hours of solid work they quietly do in committees and constituencies are overlooked. Also, what they receive as compensation is chicken-feed compared to that of even top officials of the Government, let alone the CEOs in the private sector.

Reversing the current downslide is in their hands. They should take effective counter-measures, whether by setting up an institutional mechanism of the legislatures themselves, or by their own voluntary initiatives, to erase the public impression that they do not care for accountability, propriety, probity or even common human decency.

They should quickly put on the statute book reforms proposed by the Election Commission, particularly the ones for barring persons with criminal antecedents from being put up as candidates and enacting the Code of Conduct into a law, instead of continuing to stonewall them.

B. S. RAGHAVAN