Ram Kadam ranked worst among Mumbai MLAs for 2 years running

MUMBAI: BJP MLA

Ram Kadam

, facing a backlash from all quarters after his remarks on kidnapping women in front of a Govinda gathering in his constituency, has had the dubious distinction of having bagged the last place for two consecutive years in a survey of

Mumbai MLAs

conducted by Praja Foundation, an NGO working towards enabling accountable governance.


The overall score of Kadam, a legislator from

Ghatkopar

West, also dropped in 2018 as compared to 2017. He has been ranked No. 32 out of 32 MLAs, with a score of 33.37 in 2018, lower than 41.96 in 2017.

The report card was prepared by Praja after surveying over 24,000 people. The ratings covered 32 of the city’s 36 MLAs, with the four legislators who are ministers not being included.

Kadam scored a zero in sessions of the state legislature attended. A zero score has been allotted to candidates who have attended less than 50% of the sessions. He has also scored a zero for the quality of questions raised, for which 21 marks had been set aside.

He got a score of 5 – again the worst -- for using his local area development fund. Every MLA gets Rs2 crore to spend on his constituency, and scores were given based on spending till March 2018. Kadam scored 5 as he had spent below 50% of the funds allotted to him.

All the information was sought by the NGO under the Right to Information Act. A sizeable score was for public perception — about corruption and accessibility of MLAs. His public perception took a beating as well, as he scored 11.72 in 2018 as compared to 13.47 in 2017. But he did well on perceived accessibility and was perceived as least corrupt. He was ranked 2.98 in 2017 on his accessibility; it went up to 4.06 in 2018. Similarly, the perception as least corrupt has gone up to 8.62 from 6.79 in 2018.

The survey shows the average attendance of Mumbai MLAs has gone down by 10.63 percent, from 91.88 in 2017 to 81.25 in 2018. The number of questions asked by the 32 MLAs has also decreased from 6,199 in 2017 to 4,519 in 2018. According to the Praja report, the quality of questions has significantly dropped from 58.49 percent in 2016 to 38.18 in 2017 and 38.36 in 2018.


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