The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Madhesh government to clarify why it allocated funds to lawmakers.

A first meeting of the Cabinet, held on Friday after Chief Minister Satish Kumar Singh’s appointment, decided to allocate Rs50 million each to directly elected lawmakers and Rs15 million to lawmakers elected under the proportional representation system to carry out development activities in their respective electoral constituencies.

Hearing a writ petition filed against the provincial government’s decision, a single bench of Justice Saranga Subedi issued a show cause notice to the defendants and summoned both parties for a hearing to decide whether it requires an interim order.

Law students Manish Kumar Mandal, Paritosh Kumar Sah and Abid Hussain had filed a writ petition at the apex court, naming the Office of Chief Minister and Council of Ministers of the province as one of the defendants.

In August last year, the Supreme Court halted the implementation of the controversial Constituency Infrastructure Development Programme at both federal and provincial levels.

Experts have long questioned the involvement of lawmakers in development projects, since their main mandate is to make laws. They say such programmes dilute the power of lawmakers to hold the executive, which spends the money, to account.