Princely legislators in a pauper state

All the three political parties, however, were recently seen sitting on the same side of the fence, thanks to the state government’s decision to hike the salaries and other allowances of the members of the state legislative Assembly.

Legislators belonging to both treasury and opposition benches unanimously backed and passed bills on the salary hike in the just concluded budget session. While other official bills usually take hours to get the nod of the house, these salary hike bills received the seal of approval from the law makers in less than an hour’s time.

As per the provisions of these bills, a member of the Orissa Assembly would now be eligible to take home a hefty pay packet of Rs 60,000 per month - which includes salary and other allowances - instead of the monthly salary of Rs 21,950 he or she was getting till now.

Other benefits

The legislators would also be eligible for other benefits like daily tour allowance of Rs 800 and Rs1000 within the state and outside respectively. Therefore, an MLA in Orissa – the poorest state in the country-- would now get around Rs 1 lakh per month.

Similarly, the monthly pay packets of the chief minister, cabinet ministers and ministers of state have also gone up from Rs 20,000 to Rs 59,000, Rs 18,000 to Rs 58,000 and Rs 16,000 to Rs 57,000 respectively. The Speaker and Deputy Speaker will also get around Rs 57,000.

The minimum and maximum monthly pension of the former legislators have been increased from Rs 6,000 to Rs 15,000 and Rs 15,000 to Rs 35,000. Significantly, the new salary structure of the legislators will come into effect retrospectively from June 1, 2009 which means each legislator will get a bonanza in terms of arrears.

The government’s decision to hike the salary of the legislators has already received criticism from different quarters. The critics are of the view that the salary of the elected representatives should not have gone up so much when the government is facing difficulties in paying the salaries of the school teachers and compensation to the farmers affected by natural calamities. Others say that instead of ministers and legislators deciding their own pay structure, a committee consisting of independent representatives should have been constituted to decide on the law makers’ salary like the pay commission for the government employees.

The government and legislators, however, defended the salary hike on the grounds that like rest of the people in society, the expenses of the MLAs had gone up considerably, thanks to the rise in prices of all commodities. There was an urgent need for an upward revision of the legislators’ salary as similar hikes have already been implemented for central and state government employees as well as MPs. But even with this hike, not all legislators are happy.

It reportedly remains much less compared to other states like Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. However, these legislators seem to have forgotten that there are states where their counterparts receive less salary and allowances than what they would be getting after the current hike.

Moreover, these MLAs should also keep in mind the fact that a majority of the common people in the eastern state continue to remain at the bottom of the ladder so far as development index is concerned. Hence, the salary they would be getting after the hike cannot be justified.

The row over the legislators’ salary hike seems to be far from over as elected representatives of other democratic agencies such as panchayati raj bodies and urban local bodies like municipal corporations in the state have demanded similar hikes in their allowances.