Over Rs 7 crore is what some current and former Members of Parliament (MPs) owe MTNL as unpaid telephone bills. CNN-IBN has accessed RTI details obtained by activist Subhash Agarwal showing how much money is owed by the MPs.
An overall sum of Rs 19, 78,027 is owed by six sitting members, while 399 former Members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha combined together owe over Rs 7.10 crore to MTNL. Of the six current MPs, five belong to the Congress.
Out of the current Lok Sabha MPs, the top defaulter is Hajipur MP Ram Sundar Das of Janata Dal (United), who owes Rs 9, 49,866.
Among the Congress MPs, Kalahandi MP Bhakta Charan Das owes Rs 3, 31,020, Amalapuram (Andhra Pradesh) MP GV Harsha Kumar owes Rs 2,08,660, Maharajganj (UP) MP Harsh Vardhan owes Rs 36,744 and Arani (Tamil Nadu) MP M Krishnasswamy owes Rs 3,19,740.
The sole current Rajya Sabha MP in the defaulters' list, Narendra Budania, is also from the Congress and owes Rs 1, 33,777 to MTNL.
Out of the former MPs, late Abdul Ghani Khan Chaudhary owed over Rs 34 lakh to MTNL, while Janata Dal's Basav Raj Patil owes as much as Rs 17 lakh.
As Abdul Ghani Khan Chaudhary is dead so the money owned by him cannot be recovered.
