Members of Parliament and state legislatures are elected to represent the people, to devote full time for airing and getting their grievances redressed in the legislature and to meet and listen to their constituents when the legislature is not in session.

For carrying out such onerous responsibilities, the legislators avail perquisites, which come under the budgetary provision of ?charged expenditure,? meaning thereby that they will be drawn straight from the consolidated fund without any voting. Charged expenditure is actually priority expenditure of the union and the states, taking precedence over voted expenditure.

The democratic set up recognises the serious responsibilities of legislators, hence there is seldom any protest when they raise their emoluments from time to time.

But, let us remember, that charged expenditure or voted expenditure, is the tax payer?s money which is being spent so that our legislators may decide the important legislative issues and issues of governance in comfort.

It is perhaps with such thoughts in mind that our Constitution has not allowed any legislator to hold any office of profit so long as the responsibility of legislator is being held.

Rightly so too, because if the attention of the legislator is divided between his legislative responsibilities and holding of a post of profit, then it cannot be expected that the legislator wll be able to do justice to his first responsibility of being a law maker.

Our legislators should realise that they are, first and foremost, law-makers for which they have been elected by the people. How can they look for other posts? Surely their legislative duties cannot be very light. If perchance, they do have some free time, it is expected that they will be touring their constituencies and keeping in touch with the people.

Compared to the massive population we have, a large percentage of which still lives below the poverty line, only a very small percentage is reaping the benefits of the so called booming economy. Our MPs and MLAs are expected by the people to put in more vigorous efforts to pull them out of the morass of poverty and to show their leadership in providing a decent standard of living for them.

Why then should Tenughat Vidyut Nigam Ltd be headed by a minister? Why should the state marketing board, the state vigilance board, the Hazaribagh mines board etc be headed by legislators? The Jharkhand State planning board, too, is headed by a legislator. But why ?

The question is ?why does the Jharkhand government not appoint experts to head these bodies after going through a proper selection process? How can these government undertakings, authorities and boards run efficiently without suitably qualified people at the helm?

Why should the government use these posts as largesse to be given to MLAs who could not be accommodated as ministers? Along with these posts comes the notification declaring the posts of such chairperson having status equivalent to a cabinet or state minister.

This is partly meant to skirt the laid down limit of ministries (it is 12 in Jharkhand) by giving such chairpersons such status. This does not appear to be constitutionally proper or ethically right.

What is also ethically suspect is the blatant attempt to please or appease as many legislators as possible.

But, what does happen to the concerned undertaking, authority or the board? Does it run efficiently at all or for that matter, can it run efficiently with a person having no related qualification sitting at the top? Obviously, it cannot. The state surely cannot have such a dearth of experts and qualified people among citizens that only MLAs need to head these bodies? Surely the Hazaribagh Mines Board can be headed by a mining engineer or an administrator, retired or otherwise, with impeccable credentials?

Apart from the Constitutional and legal propriety, I think one should focus on these ethical issues involved in the controversy.

To my mind, it is highly unethical for our legislators to man posts of profit irrespective of whether they are drawing salary or not. By virtue of being the chairmen, most of these MLAs do exercise their power to finalise financial transactions, contracts and appointments. Whether they earn any profit out of these exercises or not is not material. What matters, however, is the principle of keeping legislators away from executive functions and to uphold the norm of one-man-one-post.

While the issue is being thrashed out in a national debate, perhaps our honourable legislators would like to introspect, listen to their conscience and resign from their posts of profit.

(The writer is a retired chief secretary of Jharkhand)