Bangalore : Even as criticism mounted about the jolly trip undertaken by Karnataka MLAs to ‘monkey park’ and Samba dance joints in South America, a group of legislators are in Australia shopping for Christmas and the New Year.
The group is there to study infrastructure, but the itinerary betrays it all — shopping malls, exotic locations and evenings in luxury resorts; all at tax-payer’s expense.
The MLA contingent to Australia was actually to go to Japan, but with reports of a harsh winter, the team headed straight to Down Under to have some fun.
But more bizarre than the tour was the justification. Mallikayya Gutedar, who heads the Legislature’s Estimates Committee that sent the MLAs to these destination, said, “We are not committing a big crime…Don’t you send school children on vacation…Similarly MPs and MLAs are being sent through the legislature committees…”
He told reporters that the MLAs, despite the criticism, would go ahead with the tour and that only around Rs 7 lakh was being spent on each MLA and “not crores of rupees.”
A defiant Guttedar said it was unfair to blame the Congress as during the previous BJP rule, legislators undertook foreign trips twice.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah also defended the tour. He told reporters what the fuss was all about. It was not as if they were going on the foreign tour this year for the first time. “So what is the big deal? “Why are you making it a big issue?” Siddaramaiah asked reporters. He then passed the buck to the “legislature committee which decides on such things and they don’t come to us (the government).”
The jolly rides come at a time when many talukas in the state have been declared drought-hit, with central teams visiting the affected regions after the state government sought funds to grapple with the situation.
R S Menon
