Out of 217 Rajya Sabha MPs, 89 declared pecuniary interests: ADR

Out of the total 213 sitting MPs of Rajya Sabha, 89 MPs have declared that they have a financial interest in under either of the categories -- remunerative directorship, regular remunerated activity, shareholding of controlling nature, paid consultancy or professional engagement.

According to a report by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a National Election Watchdog, 124 MPs have not provided any detail about financial interest under any of the five categories.

"Out of the total 213 sitting MPs analysed, 124 (58.2 per cent) have not provided any detail about pecuniary interest/financial interest in the under any of the five mentioned heads and 89 (41.8 per cent) MPs have declared that they have a financial interest," the report said.

The report found that 24 MPs (11.3 per cent) have declared that they have some financial interest in the form of Remunerative Directorship of a company, while 189 (88.7 per cent) have declared that they have no financial interest under this head.

"The highest amount received for Remunerative Directorship has been declared by D. Kupendra Reddy of JD-S with a value of remunerative directorship of Rs 40.68 crores per annum followed by Rajeev Chandrasekhar of BJP with a value of remunerative directorship of Rs 7.03 crore and Abdul Wahab of IUML with Rs. 3.34 crores," the report claimed.

The maximum number of directorships have been declared by AIADMK's Gokulakrishnan of with 7 remunerative directorships.

According to the report, 30 (14.1 per cent) MPs have declared that they have a financial interest in the form of Regular Remunerated Activity and 183 (85.9 per cent) MPs have not declared financial interest under this head.

"The highest amount received from regular remunerated activity has been declared by BJP's Mahesh Poddar at Rs 3.18 crore per annum, followed by Mary Kom (nominated) with Rs.2.50 crore per annum and Swapan Dasgupta (nominated) with Rs 66.60 lakh as annual income from regular remunerated activity," the report found.

A total of 44 MPs have declared that they have a financial interest in the form of shareholding of controlling nature and 169 MPs have declared that they have no financial interest under this head.

The highest amount of shareholdings of controlling nature in compes have been declared by BJP's RK Sinha with a value of shareholding of controlling nature of Rs 747 crores followed by Congress's Abhishek Manu Singhvi with a value of Shareholding of controlling nature of Rs 386 crores.

There were 17 MPs including RJD's Misha Bharati and BJP's Rakesh Sinha and l Jain who have not submitted the declaration of their pecuniary interest.

( With inputs from ANI )