It was just another day at the West Bengal Assembly—until a bill landed on the Speaker’s table that made everyone do a double-take, quite literally.
The centre of attention was a seasoned Trinamool Congress MLA from Murshidabad, a three-time election winner, who evidently believes in viewing politics through an extraordinarily expensive lens.
How expensive? ₹65,000. No, that is not the cost of a scooter or a gold ring—it was for his spectacles. The MLA, exuding the calm confidence of a man who could see both the past and future in 4K clarity, submitted the bill without hesitation.
As chance would have it, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was present. Out of sheer curiosity, she enquired with the Speaker about the bill. Upon hearing the amount, her eyes reportedly widened so much that they, too, might have benefitted from ₹65,000 spectacles.
A stunned silence followed. Then came a hurried discussion between the Chief Minister and Speaker Biman Banerjee.
The result? A strict cap—MLAs will now be reimbursed a maximum of ₹5,000 for spectacles, not a rupee more, no matter how magical the frames claim to be.
An irate Mamata Banerjee also extended the crackdown. Bed rent for hospital stays has now been capped at ₹8,000 per day. Apparently, the Assembly is no longer in the business of funding five-star recovery suites.
The Assembly Secretariat, which processes MLA medical expenses, has often been confronted with bills that defy both gravity and common sense. If any bill appears more like a luxury wishlist than a medical necessity, it is flagged for the Speaker. This time, it triggered a full-blown optics revolution.
This is not the first time spectacle bills have exposed political myopia.
Last year, actor and Trinamool MLA Kanchan Mallick faced flak for submitting a ₹6 lakh bill for his daughter's birth, forcing a swift retreat after public outrage.
Similarly, Sabitri Mitra, a minister in Mamata Banerjee’s first cabinet, was compelled to withdraw her ₹99,880 medical bill—which included ₹70,000 worth of dual designer spectacles—following intense backlash.
During the Left Front regime, minister Manab Mukherjee quietly withdrew a ₹30,000 spectacle bill after it sparked public ire.
Even Kerala has not been immune to spectacle scandals. In 2018, then Assembly Speaker P. Sriramakrishnan submitted a ₹50,000 bill for his pair. RTI activists later revealed that while the frames cost ₹4,900, the lenses were priced at a staggering ₹45,000.
Former Kerala Health Minister K.K. Shailaja also made headlines with her ₹28,000 spectacles.
Interestingly, in 2004, Kerala Speaker Bhakkam Purushottaman had proposed a ₹5,000 cap on spectacles—an idea that, however, remained lost in legislative oblivion.
But West Bengal’s Assembly Speaker Biman Banerjee appears determined not to repeat history. With a new eyewear economy firmly in place, MLAs will now have to see things the old-fashioned way—without billing like Bollywood stars.
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