Marya Shakil , CNN-IBN; Sep 30, 2010;
New Delhi: When the stars from the tinsel town arrived in Delhi in 2004 as Members of Parliament in the last Lok Sabha, they got five star treatment. The government put them and nine other MPs at the prestigious Ashok Hotel as accommodation in Lutyens Delhi was not ready.
Six years have gone by since then but the bills are yet to be paid. The amount of the bill is Rs 1.2 crore.
Bollywood actors Dharmendra, Govinda and Jaya Prada are among the other MPs who ran up a bill of 1.2 crore in the India Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC) hotels, the Ashok and Janpath, in the Capital by overstaying.
Jaya Prada;
From 21.05.04-02.09.05
Bill outstanding due to overstay Rs 5,98,350.
Govinda;
From 8.12.2004- 16.11.2005
Bill outstanding due to overstay Rs 5,53,361
Dharmendra;
From 01.06.04 to 14.01.05
Bill outstanding due to overstay Rs 80,979.66
In an RTI response to activist Subhash Agarwal the hotel authorities reveal that the matter was taken up almost a year ago with the Secretary General of Lok Sabha Secretariat and Directorate of Estate but the amount of Rs1.2 crore has not yet been received.
The worst offender however is former minister of state for human resource development Mohd A A Fatmi, who ran up a bill of Rs18,13,044 for overstaying at the hotel from June 10, 2004, to September 6, 2005.
Not very far is another minister of the UPA1 MoS in the Agriculture Ministry Akhilesh Prasad Singh who has an outstanding amount of Rs 13 lakh.
Even Janpath Hotel is yet to get payments worth Rs 27 lakh from MPs.
In this Lok Sabha Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's tough stand forced his ministers SM Krishna and Shashi Tharoor out of five star hotels but in UPA1 it seems there was no austerity and clearly no one knows who will pay these bills.
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