Congress leader Amin Patel, BJP’s Parag Alavani and Sunil Prabhu from Shiv Sena clinched the first, second and third spots in terms of performing good while being legislators. They were ranked by NGO Praja foundation which analysed 31 MLAs from Mumbai on the parameters ranging from attendance in assembly, number of questions raised in assembly, academic background, criminal cases and usage of development funds.
Two Sena MLAs, Ravindra Waikar and Prakash Surve, and BJP’s Rahul Narvekarwho recently became assembly speaker-lagged far behind in the said parameters, underlined the NGO’s report.
According to Praja, Patel secured first rank with a score of 81.43 per cent, Alavani stood second with 79.96 per cent and Prabhu came third with 77.19 percent. On the other hand, Ravindra Waikar ranked 31st with 28.52 per cent,Surve got 30th rank with 29.76 per cent and Narvekar was on 29th rank with 31 per cent.
Praja has ranked the MLAs from the period of 2019 assembly winter session to 2021 monsoon session. To dig deeper, the NGO compiled data from 19 states on how many assembly sessions were called in 2020.
Maharashtra stood tenth place, as per the report which reasoned that Covid curtailed assembly sessions in 2020. Consequently, less questions were asked less. In the second year of 12th assembly (2009-2014), 11,049 questions were asked but in the second year of 14th assembly (2019-2021) just 574 questions were raised by MLAs.
The report pointed out that less number of questions were asked about core issues like housing, education, health from 2019 winter sessionto2021monsoonsessions as compared to previous sessions between 2014 and 2016. In the 13th assembly session (2014-2019), 1,107 questions were asked on health, 1,064 on crime and 1,297 on education.
Similarly, 304 questions were raised on housing, 303 on crime, 238 on education and 378 on health in the sessions of current tenure.
Commenting on the report, Praja Foundation CEO Milind Mhaske said, “Covid impacted all sectors; the most affected were health and education, which needed major attention from the state legislative. Thus therewasanurgent need for the Maharashtra government to meet so as to take inclusive decision."
Praja’s head-dialogue program Yogesh Mishra said, “Taking a look at the overall performance of Mumbai MLAs from 2019 winter session to 2021 monsoon session, 13 out of 31MLAs received an overall score of 50 per cent and below. On the other hand, 30 MLAs out of 31 received a rank of 80 per cent and above in the attendance parameter.”
However, only 11 MLAs have raised more than 150 questions during the said period. In the quality of questions asked parameter, none of the 31 MLAs achieved a score of 80 per cent and above. Thus, the higher attendance score didn’t reflectinthenumber of quality of questions asked in the assembly, he added.
