Corruption Watch

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NDTV.coFriday, January 30, 2004 (New Delhi):

With most MPs eyeing elections, its not just voters who are giving them the nightmares. Many of them still not having settled their electricity and phone bills.

And unless they are given the all-clear certificate by the Parliament, they will not be able to contest the elections.

"MPs will have to clear their dues if they want to contest," said Manohar Joshi, Speaker, Lok Sabha.

Of the 543 MPs, over 150 of them have still not settled their phone dues. In fact, MPs owe Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) as much as Rs 148 crore in unpaid dues out of which around Rs 31 crore is owed by first timer MPs.

<b>Topping the list of defaulters are Mohan Rawale of the Shiv Sena who owes more than Rs 22 lakh, former Kerala Congress leader K Karunakaran who owes more than Rs eight lakh and Brahmanand Mandal of the Samta party who owes more than Rs 6 lakh. </b>

And it's just not telephones. <b>MPs have not paid their electricity bills to the tune of Rs 5 crore with former railway minister A B Ghani Chowdhary owing Rs 20 lakh, Raghunvash Prasad Singh of RJD required to pay more than Rs three lakh and Ram Vilas Paswan over 1 lakh.</b>

For MPs, the end of the 13th Lok Sabha means that their freebies are now slowly coming to an end.

<b>Till then, they finally might have to cough up the money to settle their existing accounts if they want to contest in the coming general polls. </b> <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->