NEW DELHI: Tamil Nadu minister R Nirmal Kumar on Sunday slammed the Opposition for rejecting the government’s decision to provide cars and related allowances to MLAs.Kumar said a car is a “small target” for those who spent Rs 30-40 crore to become an MLA.“Those who spent Rs 30 crore or Rs 40 crore to become an MLA — for them, a car is nothing. It is a small target for them,” Kumar claimed.The minister also pointed out that several past and present MLAs owned multiple private vehicles but rarely visited interior villages.
Share your thoughts in the comments
Be respectful · TOI community guidelines
“What is the point of having 10 or 15 private cars if an elected representative does not even set foot inside a village in their constituency for five or ten years?” the minister asked.Kumar defended the government’s decision to provide official vehicles and allowances to all 234 MLAs, entailing an estimated additional expenditure of nearly Rs 200 crore.He insisted that official vehicles were necessary for newly elected representatives to tour their constituencies and understand public grievances firsthand.This comes days after chief minister C Joseph Vijay announced that every MLA would be provided a government car, along with a monthly allowance of Rs 75,000 towards fuel and maintenance, and Rs 25,000 to meet the cost of an assistant.However, MLAs from parties like the DMK, PMK and CPI declined the government-provided vehicles and allowances, citing the state’s debt burden.