In an almost consensual “swoop”, J&K Legislative Assembly on Monday effected almost two-fold hike in the salaries, allowances of J&K legislators, ministers and governor, citing the reason of “price hike of all the essential commodities and increase in the cost of living.” The Lower House also passed the amendment bill proposing hike in the pension to the ex-legislators as well.
In the entire House there were just two feeble voices of dissent and that too “for record sake.” They included CPI-M MLA M.Y. Tarigami and independent MLA from Langate Abdul Rashid Engineer.
Following hike, the legislators, ministers of state (MoS) and deputy ministers will get `80,000 as salary and allowances as against the existing rate of `40,300 for legislators and `40,000 for MoS/deputy ministers.
Chief minister will get `90000 comprising salary and other allowances as against the existing rate of `45000 while the cabinet ministers, presently getting `40000, will now get `85,000. Following the passage of bill in the House, later chief minister Omar Abdullah tweeted, “Now that we’ve voted a pay hike for ourselves in the assembly, I’m waiting for the brickbats.”
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Aiyar makes light of WikiLeaks
amita verma
Lucknow
March 28: Former Union minister and senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, on Monday, made light of the WikiLeaks exp-ose and said that informed being provided by them was classified and was being revealed before time.
Addressing a press conference here on Monday, Mr Aiyar denied that he had been replaced by Mr Murli Deora as petroleum minister in 2006 under pressure from US. “However, US was happy that I had been removed,” he stated.
Explaining the situation, Mr Aiyar said that when he was given additional charge of petroleum ministry, along with Panchayati Raj ministry, it was made very clear to him that this was a temporary and additional charge.
“I expected the additional charge to last 20 days but it lasted 20 months and I can boast that I did outstanding work as petroleum minister. I strongly advocated the Iran-Pak India pipeline because I thought that it was crucial for the economy as well as security of the country. In fact, I wanted to extend it to China as well. US obviously frow-ned upon the project because of their quarrel with Iran and they (US) may have been happy when the petroleum ministry was taken away,” he said.