Did MP Dayanidhi Maran not use the MPLADS fund? No, the Hindu newspaper acknowledged the mistake!
Claim
India’s most useless MP
- Zero private member bills 2. MP funds unused 3. One among the MPs who have raised the least questions Even DMK party members should be ashamed to vote for a lazy inefficient and elitist person like Dayanidhi Maran
Rating
Explanation
In Tamil Nadu, with 3 days left for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, all the political leaders are busy campaigning. Following this, it’s evident that a large number of people are consistently posting disparaging remarks about political figures on social media.
In this instance, Dayanidhi Maran, a Central Chennai member of parliament, is accused of not using the MPLADS fund for his constituency, citing a picture from a news article that appeared in The Hindu. On their social media pages, many BJP members can be seen virally sharing a picture from the Hindu article.
And in the news published by ‘The Hindu’, “According to the latest Union Government data, almost 75% of the funds allocated to the 39 Members of Parliament (MPs) in Tamil Nadu under the MPLADS fund from 2019 to 2024 have not been utilized yet. As per the data, no expenditure has been listed under the Central Chennai constituencies.”
What is the truth?
To know the truth of the news that is spreading, let us first clearly see what is MPLADS (Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme).
MPLADS Fund Scheme:
Initiated in 1993-94, this scheme was created with the primary objective of providing facilities to the members of parliament in their constituencies such as drinking water, education, public health and roads.
Under the scheme, each MP has the choice to suggest to the District Collector for works to the tune of Rs 5 crore per annum to be taken up in his/her constituency. Members of the parliament can recommend works in one or more districts in the state from where he/she has been elected.
Nominated members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha may select any one or more districts from any one state of the country to carry out the work of their choice under the scheme.
Did MP Dayanidhi Maran, fail to use MPLADS funds for his constituency?
We looked up the amount of money given to the MPLADS fund for Central Chennai Member of Parliament Dayanidhi Maran from 2019–20 to 2023–24 on the ‘Sansad’ website.
Data from the ‘Sansad’ website indicates that Dayanidhi Maran received Rs 7 crore from the MPLADS fund between 2019–20 and 2023–2024. Additionally, Dayanidhi Maran’s expenditure of Rs. 8.52 crores for the block’s development during this time was disclosed on the same website.
We have also checked the above same details on MPLADS website. Dayanidhi Maran was given Rs 7 crore from the MPLADS fund from 2019-20 to 2023-24, but he spent Rs 8.52 crore on block development during this period.
However, another section of the MPLADS website stated that Dayanidhi Maran was given Rs 9.8 crore, of which none was used.
Similarly, in the data published by MPLADS titled “Expenditure details of 17th Lok Sabha”, it was mentioned that the funds provided by the government was Rs.7 crore, the amount sanctioned was Rs.16.77 crore, out of which Rs.8.5292 crore was spent on constituency development.
Furthermore, on another page of the same website, 9.8 crore funds were spent and shows the remaining amount as zero.
This indicates that distinct data can be seen on the same website which means the shared information is inaccurate.
We spoke to Dayananda Krishnan, who was cited in The Hindu as having obtained the data via RTI. He claimed that the RTI response he got only mentioned that the information could be found on the MPLADS website. He added that there is no mention of any amount in it. The MPLADS website’s information is mentioned in the Hindu article. As we said before, it is contradictory information. However, The Hindu’s claim that the data was obtained in an RTI reply is incorrect.
It is also learned that The Hindu published an article on its page on April 13, stating, “This article has been withdrawn from publication as the data in the cited RTI report was found to be wrong” and has now been removed from its pages. But many are taking this news as true and spreading it virally on social media pages.
The question arises as to why Union government websites are so unreliable in providing information and slow in updating data.
Conclusion:
Our search revealed that the data circulating on social media claiming that Dayanidhi Maran, Member of Parliament from Chennai Central, did not use the MPLADS fund for his constituency is false.
