Gujarat MLAs' take 64% pay hike

The 182 legislators from Gujarat on Wednesday took a raise of Rs 45,000 or 64% in their monthly salary retrospectively from February 2017.

The pay hike will cost the state exchequer Rs 6 crore in arrears and an additional Rs 10 crore every year henceforth.

A bill to this effect was unanimously passed in the two-day monsoon session of the Assembly. With Wednesday’s hike, the salary of Gujarat legislators is up from Rs 70,727 to Rs 1.16 lakh per month.

Other than legislators, the salary of ministers, speaker, deputy speaker and leader of opposition too have been raised. With their new salary of Rs 1.32 lakh per month, their increment stands at 54% of their current salary of Rs 86,000 per month.

Tabling the bill — The Salaries and Allowances of Members, Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly, Ministers and Leader of Opposition Laws (Amendment) Bill 2018 — in the Assembly, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Pradeepsinh Jadeja said this was being done to remove discrepancy in remuneration of the Gujarat legislators, compared to their counterparts in many other states.

“The salary of the legislators in the 182-member Gujarat Assembly has not been revised since 2005, while the remuneration of their counterparts in other states was comparatively much higher,” Jadeja said.
The minister then went on to quote salaries of legislators in Uttarakhand, Telangana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, which stood at Rs 2.91 lakh, Rs 2.50 lakh, Rs 2.25 lakh and Rs 2.13 lakh respectively.

On the other hand, legislators in Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Odisha drew the pay packet of a little over lakh of rupees every month.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has 99 legislators, with the support of one independent legislator. The Opposition Congress has 77 members and support of two other independent as well as two Bharatiya Tribal Party legislators. The Nationalist Congress Party, on the other hand, has a lone legislator in the 182-member Assembly.

Looking at the voting, the legislators cutting across party lines supported the Bill. Congress legislator Virji Thumar and Lalit Vasoya dubbed the rise inadequate. “It should have been at least Rs 2 lakh as it would give us more money to spend on our electorate in the constituency,” Vasoya told reporters.

However, his colleague from the party Pratap Dudhat stated that he would not take the raise “till government announces farm loan waiver or raise MSP for their produce.”