MLA Pawan Kumar Jaiswal (centre) at the Assembly with people from his constituency. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, March 11: Most politicians hate performance assessment, especially by voters. Pawan Kumar Jaiswal (39), the Independent MLA from Dhaka Assembly seat in East Champaran, thinks the other way round.

In a bid to find out if he was making the right noises in the House, he has decided to make arrangements for 360 people of his constituency to review him in the Assembly. He would distribute special passes of fellow legislators among them to monitor him live.

According to norms, each MLA is entitled to two such passes per day in a session.

Pawan told The Telegraph: “It was not an easy task to convince 90 MLAs for issuing passes for the first set of visitors. Once I explained them my plan, 90 legislators agreed to issue the special passes and made their recommendations for the people of my constituency.”

The voters of Dhaka, around 185km north from here, would watch the budget session of the Assembly in two phases. The first started from today with 60 people watching the proceedings. On Tuesday and Wednesday, two other sets of people would attend the meet.

Another 180 people would watch the proceedings in the second phase from March 19 to 21. Each day, 60 people would attend the House.

Pawan today arranged two Volvo buses for the 60 select voters of his constituency. They started their journey at 6am and reached the MLA’s residence at Beer Chand Patel Marg here at 12noon.

The legislator offered a sumptuous lunch to his reviewers. They had chicken, roti, rice, two types of vegetables and salad in his presence.

After lunch, Pawan’s aides accompanied the voters to the Assembly portico. The visitors appreciated their MLA after attending the second-half Assembly proceedings.

In fact, Pawan sought suggestions from the visitors about the issues he should raise for the betterment of the constituency. Satayendra Mishra, a farmer and a resident of Karmawa village, said: “There are several issues in our constituency. They include building a bridge from Phulwaria Ghat to Jamuia Ghat on Bekiya river. It will cut down the travelling time to Sitamarhi drastically. Our MLA raised the issue and the government has given its nod for this project because of his efforts.”

Another visitor and farmer of Lahan Dhaka village, Mohammad Obdullah, said: “There is an urgent need of an SC/ST police station in our district as the government has proposed to open such police stations in all the districts. Our MLA raised this issue today in the Assembly. We hope that the government will pay heed to it.”

At the end of the day, Satyendra and Obdullah were happy. Their MLA — Pawan — was satisfied.

“I do not want to keep my people in the dark. They have every right to know how I am representing them and how I am projecting their problems before the government. They have voted for me and they must see how I perform my duty in the Assembly,” the MLA said.

Son of retired schoolteacher Mahendra Prasad Choudhary and homemaker Prem Kumari, Pawan has been socially active. His inclination towards the BJP was evident when he attended the BJP legislative party meeting in 2010 after winning the election as an Independent defeating the JD(U) candidate, Faisal Rahman, by 1,649 votes.

Some say Pawan, who has studied till Class XII, is a strongman. But those who visited the Assembly today had a different opinion about him.