Thiruvananthapuram: The Payment of Salaries and Allowances (Amendment) Bill, 2018, that seeks to increase the salaries and allowances of ministers and legislators will be presented in the cabinet on Wednesday.
Apart from proposing a huge hike in existing incentives, the Bill also proposes a payment of Rs 50,000 for airfare for legislators to attend assembly committee meetings. However, the timeframe for the travel is not mentioned. The government will have to cough up Rs 5,25,75,576 to implement the proposals. The raise will be effective from April 1.
Though the government reiterates that the Bill is being presented in the assembly on the basis of proposals by the Justice JM James committee that studied the pay and allowances of legislators, it has conveniently rejected several measures proposed by the committee to cut costs.
The committee had proposed that legislators should not be given unlimited medical allowances and they should be provided medical insurance. If this proposal was adopted, government could have been prevented crores of rupees worth expenditure on legislators' medical bills.
Instead, amid a financial crisis, the government has decided to increase such allowances.
On its decision to consider a hike in allowances, the Bill says, "Salaries of ministers, speaker and legislators were last revised in 2012. In the five years since then, the prices of food items, petrol, diesel and electricity have gone up considerably. The government decided to set up a committee headed by Justice JM James to study salary hikes for ministers, legislators, speaker, deputy speaker, chief whip, opposition leader and former legislators. The commission submitted its report on August 22, 2017."
The commission has recommended to increase the salary of ministers to Rs 1,03,700. But the government felt that such a huge increase was not possible at one go. The government also effected changes to the proposal that legislators' salary be increased to Rs 92,000. The cabinet decided to increase ministers' salaries from existing Rs 50,000 to Rs 90,300 and MLAs' from existing Rs 30,000 to Rs 62,000.
Other changes
• The monthly allowance of ministers, speaker, deputy speaker, chief whip, opposition leader and other legislators will go up from Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000, and constituency allowance will go up from Rs 12,000 to Rs 40,000.
• Legislators' accident insurance goes up from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 20 lakh.
• The travel allowance for ministers, speaker, deputy speaker, chief whip and opposition leader goes up from Rs 10 to Rs 15 per kilometre and the allowance for accidental expenses will increase from 50 paise to Rs 2 per kilometre.
• Daily travel allowance will increase from Rs 750 to Rs 1,000.
• The allowance for train journey within and outside the state will go up from 50 paise to Re 1 for a kilometre. The allowance for incidental expenses will increase from Rs 125 to Rs 500 per kilometre.
• Rs 15 per kilometre will be paid for road travel outside the state instead of the existing Rs 10. Incidental expense allowance will increase from 50 paise to Rs 2 per kilometre. The daily travel allowance will be hiked from Rs 900 to Rs 1,500.
• For road travel within the state, legislators will see their allowance going up from Rs 7 to Rs 10 per kilometre. The daily travel allowance will increase from Rs 750 to Rs 1,000.
• They will also get an allowance for air travel for assembly-related purpose within the country and outside. They will also get a maximum incidental expense allowance of Rs 500.
Read more: Latest Kerala news