​Palakkad: On March 25, a Palakkad-based social activist, Boban Mattumantha, shot off a missive to Palakkad collector G Priyanka asking her to remove all the backlit photographs of MLAs found on the poles of high-mast lamps in the district.

Mattumantha was not satisfied with just the removal of these backlit images from high-mast poles installed using the Asset Development Funds of MLAs. He wanted the collector to recover from the MLAs all the electricity charges the local bodies have had to bear to keep these MLA snapshots lighted in the nights.

He had come across two such MLA photographs with bright nightglow in Palakkad district: Kongad MLA Santhakumari's and Alathur MLA K D Prasenan's. He took the pictures and attached them along with his letter to the district collector.

Later, he came across an illuminated image of M B Rajesh, the minister of local bodies himself, on a high-mast pole at Nangalassery panchayat in Rajesh's constituency Thrithala. Mattumantha suspects that several MLAs and MPs across Kerala have their backlit photographs on high-mast poles.

"To be always seen by the public is the MLA's need. Not ours," Mattumantha told Onmanorama. "Why should we, the common man, bear the cost of an MLA's or MP's vanity," he said. It is not as if these nightglow MLA images accomplish a major midnight heist of scarce panchayat funds. One such backlit image would cost a panchayat nothing more than ₹117 a year.

But Mattumantha says principles matter. "Even if it is a small amount, it is undemocratic to ask the public to compensate for an MLA's self-love," he said.

Here is how Mattumantha arrived at the ₹117 figure. These MLA snaps acquire their inner luminosity from a 5 watt LED bulb. Mattumantha says if this bulb functions 12 hours a day it would take 15-16 days for it to consume one unit of electricity. This would mean two units a month. As it stands, a panchayat pays ₹4.9 per unit for street light. So in a month, it will be ₹9.8. For a year, this will be ₹117.

It is this annual amount that panchayats are paying KSEB from their own coffers that Mattumantha wants the collector to recoup from the MLAs.

Mattumantha is also armed with an RTI reply that states that there is no law that insists on the picture of an MLA alongside an asset created using the Asset Development Fund of an MLA. Flip side is, there is also no law that states that photographs should not be used.  

In fact, it is easy to defend photographs. The latest guidelines to the MP Local Area Development Scheme (the project on which the MLA Asset Development Fund is modelled) insists on the name of the MP, if not a photograph. Here is what it says: "For greater public awareness, a plaque (stone/metal) carrying the inscription 'Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme Work' indicating the cost involved, the commencement, completion and inauguration date, and the name of the MP recommending the project, should be permanently erected at the project site and placed at eye level for better visibility."

If the name is compulsory, a photograph cannot be logically opposed as it is only an expressive version of a name.  "But a panchayat has to pay nothing for a name," Mattumantha said.

Even then, he scoffs at the insistence on a name, too. "The inscription of the name of an MLA or MP is also irrelevant. A public asset -- a high-mast lamp or pubic toilet or a school bus -- is created as part of a larger universal project (MPLADS and MLA ADF) and not at the local initiative of an individual MP or MLA," he said.