At Rs 2L salary, Delhi MLAs may be best paid

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Oct 07, 2015, DHNS: Delhi legislators can soon expect a pay package of Rs 2.1 lakh per month, more than double the Rs 90,000 they are drawing at present, after an independent expert committee recommended the hike on Tuesday.

The proposed hike, however, will need the Centre’s approval, said an official in the Assembly secretariat.

The Aam Aadmi Party’s political rivals seized the opportunity to highlight certain parts of the report to slam the Arvind Kejriwal government.

They stated that the proposed hike under the head “salary” may be raised four-fold from the existing Rs 12,000 to Rs 50,000.

The social media was also abuzz with angry comments with many BJP and Congress sympathisers criticising the hike under “conveyance allowance” head by five-fold from Rs 6,000 to Rs 30,000.

The committee submitted the report to Speaker Ram Niwas Goel, who said the proposal is still at a discussion stage and it would go before the Assembly’s Committee on Salary and Allowances, which set up the pay review panel in August.

As per the proposal, the MLA’s monthly salary should be raised from Rs 12,000 to Rs 50,000, constituency allowance should be hiked from Rs 18,000 to Rs 50,000, secretarial allowance should be raised from Rs 10,000 to Rs 70,000, among other increases in conveyance and daily allowances.

The panel also suggested a 10 per cent raise in the basic salary, Rs 5,000 per month, after every 12 months, from the date on which new salary and allowances come into force.

At present, the monthly payment to ministers under “salary” head is Rs 20,000.
If their salaries are not revised soon, the proposed package for MLAs may be more than even that of the chief minister and his Cabinet.

The last salary revision was done in 2011 when the Congress government led by Sheila Dikshit gave itself a 100 per cent hike.

A law maker’s current monthly pay package, besides the salary, constituency allowance and secretarial allowance, includes travel expense reimbursement and two data entry operators’ wages.

In addition to this, the legislators get a daily allowance at the rate of Rs 1,000 (max 40 days per year) for attending Assembly or committee meetings.

They are also eligible for a conveyance advance of up to Rs 4 lakh (repayable within the term).

Goel said the committee is a first-of-its-kind in the country, where elected representatives voluntary left it to an expert panel to decide on revising their pay and allowances though they were constitutionally and statutorily entitled to decide for themselves.

Additional burden

“There is an additional burden of Rs 7,000 crore on the people of Delhi as the number of taxes have increased. It is feared that the expenditure on revised pay and allowances will further burden the common man,” said BJP’s Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Vijender Gupta.

The committee consists of former secretary general of the Lok Sabha P D T Achary, Associate Editor of The Tribune K V Prasad, Supreme Court advocate Balraj S Malik and Assembly Secretary Prasanna Kumar Suryadevara.