Salary hike: Youth Congress protests outside Kejriwal’s residence

The Delhi Assembly on Thursday passed a bill to effect a 400 % salary hike for city MLAs, along with a substantial increase in allowances. The overall proposed hike is two-and-half fold.

The Bill also proposes rise in constituency allowance from existing Rs 18,000 to Rs 50,000. An “office rental and related utilities” allowance of Rs 25,000 has been proposed for meeting expenditure on office space and other essential amenities provided by government agencies.

“This whip pressurises the legislators to vote in favor of the bill”.

When Parliament is in session, they get a daily allowance of Rs 2,000.

Echoing similar sentiments, NCP leader Majeed Memon said that the increase in salary should be reasonable. The one-time allowances of MLAs have also been recommended to be increased significantly with one time “office furnishing” allowance of Rs 1 lakh, Rs 60,000 for purchasing office equipment and a vehicle loan of Rs 12 lakh, which is Rs 4 lakh at present. “This will bring down their credibility”, Dikshit told ANI here. The Bill also provides for a reimbursable sum of Rs 70,000 per month.

MPs are also reimbursed for 34 flight trips and unlimited rail and road travel for the year on official business. Their salary was Rs 2.10 lakh.

The recommendations were made in the First Report of the Ethics Committee, which was tabled in the Assembly by AAP MLAs Narayan Dutt Sharma and Bhavna Gaur.

Pushkar further pointed out that now an AAP MLA was receiving a salary of 53,000 rupees, while earlier a lot of them were working on “donations” collected from people.

The Congress which was no lawmakers in the Assembly and the BJP which holds three seats had opposed the hike.