Analysis of the financial or commercial declaration made by Members of Rajya Sabha
22 Apr, 2015As per the rules, all Member of Rajya Sabha has to make a declaration regarding the commercial or financial interest under five categories - remunerative directorship, regular remunerative activity, shareholding of a controlling nature, paid consultancy and professional engagement. Such disclosures are necessary to avoid a ‘conflict of interest’. The Association for Democratic Reforms has analysed the declarations made by 211 sitting members of the Rajya Sabha which has shown that 124 have declared that they have no commercial or financial interest while 87 have declared financial interests. As per the analysis:-
1. The members of Rajya Sabha figuring in the list of top three in terms of the amount declared from professional engagements are :-
a. Sachin Tendulkar (Nominated member of RajyaSabha) Rs.72.79 crore.
b. KTS Tulsi (Nominated member of RajyaSabha) Rs.19.13 crore.
c. Mithun Chakraborty (AITC, West Bengal) Rs.16.93 crore.
2. The members of Rajya Sabha figuring in the list of top three in terms of the amount declared under ‘regular remunerated activity’ are:-
a. Abhishek Manu Singhvi (INC, Rajasthan) worth Rs.82.33 crore.
b. Vijay Mallya (IND, Karnataka) with Rs.2.51 crore.
c. Yalamanchili Satyanarayana Chowdary (TDP, Andhra Pradesh) with Rs.1.68 crore.
3. The members of Rajya Sabha figuring in the list of top three in terms of the amount declared from remunerative directorship belong to Karnataka and they are:-
a. Vijay Mallya with Rs.8.81 crore per annum and has declared assets of Rs. 615 crore.
b. Rajeev Chandrashekar with Rs.6 crore per annum.
c. D Kupendra Reddy (JD(S), Karnataka) with Rs.3.24 crore.
4. The members of Rajya Sabha figuring in the list of top three in terms of the value of benefits derived for all paid consultancy are:-
a. Ashok S Ganguly with Rs.36 lakh.
b. KTS Tulsi at Rs.27.50 lakh.
c. Narendra Kumar Kashyap with Rs.10.53 lakh.
5. As per the analysis, a total of 21 MPs whose worth is more than Rs.10 crore have declared that they have no pecuniary interests. Jaya Bachchan, Naresh Gujral, Sanjay Raut, Rekha Vijay Goel, C P Thakur, Oscar Fernandes, Chandan Mitra, Nirmala Sitharaman, and H K Dua have declared that they have declared pecuniary interests. Further, the report has found that four MPs with assets more than Rs.100 crore have declared no pecuniary interests. These MPs are:-
a. T Subbarami Reddy (INC, Andhra Pradesh) with assets worth Rs.422.44 crore.
b. Arun Jaitley(BJP, Gujarat) with assets worth Rs.120.06 crore.
c. Karan Singh (INC, NCT of Delhi) with assets worth Rs.116.43 crore.
d. Mayawati (BSP, Uttar Pradesh) with assets worth Rs.111.64 crore .
The report has found that Shiv Sena’s Rajkumar Nandlal Dhoot has declared controlling stakes in highest number of companies (31). It is followed by Sanjay Dattatraya Kakde in 30 and Vijay Darda in 19 companies.
The ADR has requested the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to adopt a similar register in case of the Lok Sabhato avoid a conflict of interest in the process of policy making.