Ranchi, Dec. 14: State finance department will release MLA funds meant for developing constituencies at the earliest in the wake of Assembly Speaker Dinesh Oraon's recent barb that the bureaucracy did not take legislators seriously,

State planning-cum-finance department principal secretary Amit Khare said they had ordered respective deputy commissioners (DCs) and deputy development commissioners (DDCs) to clear pending bills related with the MLA Local Area Development Fund.

Fifty per cent of MLA Local Area Development Funds - each of Jharkhand's 82 MLAs get Rs 3 crore a year - meant for this financial year (2015-16) will be released soon, the finance department has said.

Khare today apprised the developments to Assembly Speaker Oraon during a meeting on Vidhan Sabha premises a day before the winter session of the Assembly is scheduled to start.

"We issued this order on Saturday itself to the DCs and DDCs concerned," Khare said.

"I am happy that government has honoured the demands of MLAs. It was a matter of self-respect," Oraon told the media afterwards.

But, insiders said that the finance department was not issuing fresh MLA funds because of backlog in previous fiscal years.

Apparently, finance officials do not regularly get bills for re-imbursement of old expenditure, either at the level of MLAs or DCs. The finance department has not received bills to show utilisation of funds to the tune of Rs 390 crore.