After legislators in Bihar lost the lucrative local area development (LAD) funds to chief minister Nitish Kumar’s new initiatives to curb corruption, they are happy to get a three-fold rise in their salaries and perks becoming effective from April 1.
Bihar’s 318 legislators — 243 MLAs and 75 MLCs — buried all their political differences in welcoming the decision taken by the Nitish Kumar-led JD(U)-BJP government to increase the salary and perks of each legislator to about `90,000 per month.
The state Cabinet on Thursday stamped its approval on this proposal put forward by a three-member ministerial committee looking into the pay revision issue.
The pension of former legislators was also increased from the current `6,000 to `15,000 per month. The monthly allowance payable to the ministers of state was also raised from the current `14,000 to `17,500. All these increased pays would put an additional annual burden of `34 crores on the state exchequer, according to Cabinet secretary Ravikant.
“Salaries have risen everywhere in recent years, so it had to be for the MLAs now. Even the MPs’ salaries have risen. The MLAs’ salaries are being reviewed after five years,” said chief minister Nitish Kumar. His decision last month to abolish the “vidhayak quota” — the annual `2 crore paid to each legislator as local area development fund — had attracted muted resentment from a majority of Bihar’s legislators.
Each legislator would now get a monthly salary of `25,000 in place of the current `8,000, a monthly constituency allowance raised from the current `12,000 to `25,000, stationery allowance of `8,000 in place of the current `2,000, and a sum of `15,000 per month for their assistants in place of the `10,000 currently available.
The demand for raising the legislators’ salaries and perks had started since the 6th Pay Commission’s recommendations were made effective, but the demand gathered silent momentum since Kumar’s government did away with the LAD fund of legislators to curb the massive corruption it often entails.