AAP MLAs less corrupt, but more criminal, says report

“The performance of students in 2016-17 CBSE exams in the case of Class 10th and Class 12, was only possible because nearly 43% of the students in the Class IX and 26% of students in Class XI, were failed in year 2015-16 in state government schools, to achieve these results,” says Nitai Mehta, Managing Trustee of Praja foundation while releasing the third report card of Delhi. With these findings, there stands a question on what Aam Aadmi Party has done in the education sector too.

It’s not just in the educational sector, but questions are being raised on the functioning of the AAP government. According to report, progress in all the sectors has been poor.

The number of complaints on the lack of water supply has increased in two years. According to the report, “The number of complaints of ‘no water supply’ has risen dramatically to 52,100 in 2017 from 34,554 in 2015 ”.

The third report released by Praja Foundation also states that the accessiblity of MLAs has decreased from 64.91% to 50.38%.

There are two MLAs Pramila Tokas and Devender Singh Sherawat who have not raised a single issue in the Assembly during the entire year whereas there are other six MLAs who have raised only one issue during the whole year.

On the other hand, the criminal record of the MLAs have gone up and there are 32 MLAs out of 58 MLAs who have criminal records whereas at the time of election there were only 9 MLAs who had the criminal records against them. Senior journalist Rahul Dev, who released the report along with other members, said “This issue has to be seen with more depth as there could be political cases against them after elections”.

The bottom ranked five MLAs are Pramila Tokas, Amanatulla Khan, Sarita Singh, Mahinder Yadav and Dinesh Mohaniya whereas the top ranked five MLAs are Mohinder Goyal, Jagdish Pradhan(BJP), Rajesh Gupta, Ajay Dutt and Praveen Kumar. Jagdish Pradhan of BJP is the only MLA to secure a position in top three consecutively for last three years in the report card.

“The overall scores of the MLA has fallen from 58.83% in 2016 to 55.39% in 2017,” says Milind Mhaske, Director of the foundation. The performance of the Delhi MLAs with reference to perceived performance shows scores falling from 57.59% to 55.9 % . Though on every front the performance of the MLAs is poor, people of Delhi feel that they are less corrupt. This is the perception of the people but as far as the performance is concerned the MLAs score has come down drastically.

Praja Foundation is a non-partisan organisation working towards enabling governance since 1999 and it empowers citizens with information to participate in the government. Of the 70 MLAs, the overall appraisal was done for 58, while nine MLAs who are ministers, speaker and Deputy Speakers, one MLA representing Cantonment Board, one MLA who was suspended and one who was elected on August 28 were not ranked. In Delhi, out of 70 MLAs, 66 MLAs belong to AAP.

Yogesh, who works with the foundation, said that the rating was done on the basis of the data accessed through RTI on attendance of Assembly sessions, number and type of issues raised, use of discretionary funds used and personal interviews with 28,624 citizens of Delhi conducted by a survey research organisation. While ranking, 60 points were given for records and 40 for the perception of the people about the MLAs.