From CK Nayak
New Delhi: With Assembly elections around the corner, Meghalaya ministers and MLAs seem to have realised rather late in the day that they should be visiting their constituencies instead of making foreign jaunts – an activity they have been pursuing with passion.
Since the past few months most of the legislators are spending more time in their constituencies realising that they have neglected their constituents for nearly four years and now its time for the ‘healing touch’.
Unlike earlier occasions the legislators are no longer making a beeline for visiting foreign countries on flimsy pretexts; not even in small groups. Constitutional functionaries like the Chief Minister and Speaker are going abroad in recent times on official programmes mostly at the cost of the Central Government and not from the State exchequer.
Chief Minister Dr Mukul Sangma is currently on a visit to Canada and Japan as part of a Central delegation to study the working of the GST with other finance ministers from different states.
Speaker Charles Pyngrope, who often makes it to the news for his foreign visits with large entourage, has just returned from Colombo but as part of a Commonwealth delegation organised by the Parliament.
In sharp contrast only earlier this year a huge team of 15 legislators and four officials headed by the Speaker, visited Manila (Philippines) and Hanoi (Vietnam) for a week-long tour. They also wrapped up their visits with a post-conference tour to Thailand (Bangkok). This was followed by several visits by the Speaker, ministers, parliamentary secretaries and MLAs with officials to different countries at different times.
Tour programmes were changed and invitations were even arranged for some of the visits which came in for criticism even by the CAG.
MLAs from Karnataka came in for sharp public criticism for undertaking a trip to South America claiming it was official. They were immediately recalled.
The legislators have also become apprehensive since delimitation has changed the character of many of their constituencies. Suddenly they are finding that their pocket boroughs have gone to their neighbouring constituency and new areas are added with fresh voters to be cultivated.
There are cases when sitting legislators, few of them ministers, have to fight with each other in the delimited Assembly seats.
Fearing sure defeat some even are eyeing other constituencies to save their positions and in such a scenario there is little scope for cooling their heels in foreign locales.
“Many foreign trips will come if we can retain our constituencies as MLA but if we lose where is the question of going abroad,” one legislator said on condition of anonymity.
“We also go abroad with clearance from the Centre and for the State’s work,” the legislator added.
Frequent change of Government in this tenure also took lot of time of the MLAs to adjust to new situations. The Government changed four times in the first three years itself and a semblance of stability came one year after Dr Mukul Sangma took over. Before that the legislators were mostly camping in Delhi demanding change of leadership.
Now most of them are trying to make up for the lost time and rushing to their constituencies to save their seats. Some MLAs also fear that they will not get tickets from their parties and hence have to work harder to fight on their own which is resulting in legislators spending more time with their ‘once forgotten but most valuable voters’.