North-South divide -- MPs fight over free phone calls!

North-South divide -- MPs fight over free phone calls!
Navika Kumar

New Delhi, May 12: You'd be naive to expect either North or South Indian politicians to be fighting each other over, say, the budgetary support given to their states, or the plan outlays for development projects. True to their type, these politicians are actually fighting over, hold your breath, their free phone calls!

Bizarre as it sounds, the South Indian members of the august houses of Parliament are cut up at their North Indian counterparts getting more effective free phone calls. And at this point in time, a House committee is actually spending its time and resources to address this critical flash-point between the northern and southern MPs -- the issue is being discussed by the committee on Salaries and Allowances, headed by Congress MP K P Singh Deo.

At the heart of the matter is the one lakh free phone calls that are allowed for all MPs per billing cycle of two months -- in addition, the MPs are also given two free telephone connections, one at their constituency and one in Delhi. The southern MPs are of the view that when they call their constituency (from Delhi) or call up Delhi from their constituency, or the other way around, they use up more of their standard phone calls than the North Indian ones do since their constituencies are closer to Delhi.

(A two-minute STD call from Delhi to a village in Haryana would be equivalent to around 20 calls, but the same call to a village in Tamil Nadu will use up 50 to 60 calls out of an MPs allowed quota of free calls. This is because, STD calls are charged as per distance slabs and larger the distance to which a phone call is made, the faster are the `free calls' used up.)

The MPs are now demanding that Northern and Southern MPs be treated on equal footing and be given free calls on the basis of minutes rather than charging them by distance slabs.

Says A D K Jayaseelan, DMK MP from Trichandur, Tamil Nadu, ``of course making calls to our constituency near Kanyakumari makes us exhaust our quota of free calls within a few months as we have to call our party supremo every night, our constituency as well as officials in Tamil Nadu dealing with problems of our constituencies. But because we are a part of the NDA Government, we are unable to raise these issues with the Government. We may informally take a delegation to the PM to address our problem rather than raising this issue in the Parliament, and adding to the noise created by the Opposition parties.''

This was however countered by the BJP MP from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, C Radhakrishnan, ``why do these MPs from the South not complain when they are given certain free trips by air to the southern constituencies, a facility which does not apply much to MPs from the north or at least is not of the same monetary value.'' However, Radhakrishnan was quick to add that ``one lakh free calls were too low by any standards and should be increased to at least 1.5 lakh.''