75% salary hike: How Karnataka legislators will use the exchequer’s money

By Newsgram Staff Writer

The legislators of Karnataka on Monday passed a Bill which will entitle them to a 75 per cent hike in their salaries, making them the highest paid legislators in the country.

"The enormous hike in the salary includes some new categories of reimbursements. These include Rs 5,000 per night for each day of their stay in a hotel with no fixed limits on the number of days," reported an English newspaper.

" In addition to that legislators are also entitled for using local transport costing Rs 1,500 per day. For the claim of such facilities, they will only have to produce the cash memo, " quoted Times of India.

According to the Karnataka Ministers' Salaries and Allowances (Amendment) Bill, 2015, the cost to the exchequer from the hikes is about Rs 44 crore.

After the hike in salary, the chief minister's salary would increase from Rs 30,000 per month to Rs 50,000, while his cabinet ministers will get a hike from Rs 25,000 to Rs 40,000.

Not only this, the regulated personal expenditure of the legislators has also been doubled from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 3 lakh. A minister of state gets Rs 35,000 as salary against Rs 16,000, while the sumptuary allowance has been hiked from Rs 80,000 to Rs 2 lakh. The amazing thing about the passing of these bills is that there were no hindrance in its way and were passed without any discussion.

Law Minister T B Jayachandra, who steered the bill, and announced the approximate additional expense to the state exchequer as Rs 44 crore per annum. The govt. justified the bills for the increase in the salaries and reimbursements of the legislators by saying that it was necessary , as the cost of living has increased.

Thus, the MLAs and MLCs have been benefited in their basic salary from Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000, telephone allowance from Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000, constituency allowance from Rs 15,000 to Rs 40,000, constituency travel allowance from Rs 25,000 to Rs 40,000, signifying a total increase of Rs 50,000 per month in the amount that they get directly. Not only this, the legislators have also secured their future by giving themselves a pension of Rs 40,000 per month. Their existing pension is Rs 15,000. Thus, in terms of salary, CM and the speaker are the most benefited body of the state as they would be paid equally but there is no special cheese for the leader of opposition.