NEW DELHI: In the backdrop of deepening economic inequality and unabated agrarian distress, BJP MP Varun Gandhi has called upon Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to initiate steps to ensure that the economically better off Parliamentarians give up their salaries, besides freezing compensations to lawmakers till constitution of an Independent review body.
Contrasting over 4000 per cent hike in compensation to Parliamentarians in the last one decade with sharp slump in legislative businesses, Gandhi in a letter to Lok Sabha Speaker, a copy of which is with this newspaper, has argued that the scale of growing economic inequality in the country warrants the Parliamentarians to entirely give up their salaries.
“The standing committee has been referred 28 per cent of bills in the 16th Lok Sabha against 71 per cent in the 15th Lok Sabha. The number of sittings of the House has come down from 123 in 1952 to 75 in 2016. In contrast, compensations to Parliamentarians have gone up by over 4000 per cent— a raise which is unlikely even in the profit driven private sector,” Gandhi has illustrated to drive home his arguments.
Incidentally, a Parliamentary standing committee has already recommended for steep hike in salaries of the MPs of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Currently, an MP gets a gross Rs 2.70 lacks in salary and allowances.
Taking a critical view of the tendency among Parliamentarians to rush to hike their salaries, Gandhi has mentioned in the letter that Assemblies of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh effects 163 per cent and Rs 30.62 crore in hike in salaries and additional costs to the exchequer respectively in 2016. He added that the UP Assembly has seen a bill seeking hike in salary of MLAs from Rs 1.17 lakh a month to Rs 1.87 lakh in 2017, while Tamil Nadu retrospectively enhanced compensations to legislators despite the state grappling with acute agrarian crisis.
Arguing that “we must make each generation economically equal than the last one”, Gandhi illustrated stark contrast between the personal wealth of the Parliamentarians and the people at large. “Against 319 MPs with assets more than Rs 1 crore in 2009, there are 449 such members in the Lok Sabha. There are 24 per cent Lok Sabha MPs with assets over Rs 10 crores in the 16th Lok Sabha, while the average assets come at Rs 14.61 crores. In Rajya Sabha, 96 per cent MPs are crorepatis, with average assets of Rs 20.12 crores,” added Gandhi. Incidentally, the government spent Rs 176 crores in 2016 in salaries and allowances to Lok Sabha MPs alone.
The BJP MP has reasoned that the Lok Sabha Speaker should examine the current practice of Parliamentarians abrogating the right to hike their own salaries and in place must constitute an Independent statutory body on the lines of the Review Body on senior salaries in the United Kingdom.