Year-end celebrations arrived early for Odisha legislators as the proposal for a three-fold hike in their salary was approved by the state assembly on the last day of the winter session. Ratifying four Bills, the legislature cleared the raise for the members, the speaker, the deputy speaker, and ministers. With a paycheque of ₹3.45 lakh a month, Odisha’s MLAs will now be among the highest paid in the country. The chief minister will draw ₹3.74 lakh in salary and allowances. An MLA’s fixed salary will go up from ₹35,000 to ₹90,000, and allowances will rise from ₹65,000 to ₹2.55 lakh. Former legislators will be entitled to a larger pension. The last raise in the assembly was in 2017; the latest revision comes with retrospective effect from June 2024.
The Bills passed unanimously in the House as, unsurprisingly, the raise found resonance among all parties. But outside, a debate was raging on the rationale behind the move. Amid this, BJD chief and opposition leader Naveen Patnaik went on to announce he would forgo the increased salary and allowances, and wrote to Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi to spend it on the poor. That gesture was called out by his political opponents, who pointed out that neither he nor his party opposed the Bills on the floor of the House.
The hike in Odisha has again triggered an old question: should lawmakers not be paid handsomely to keep politics clean? Truth be told, the salaries of most MLAs were well below senior public servants’. Now consider that an MLA represents about 3 lakh people on an average. Such is the nature of politics that lawmakers have to dig into their pockets to meet the expenses of attending to constituents on a regular basis. Insulation from the lures of corruption requires that elected representatives are paid well, as Singapore ensured years ago.
On the other hand, a raise in salary and allowances must entail more accountability, responsibility, and transparency on part of the legislators. It comes at a time when thousands of government teachers and contracted government employees are agitating over job regularisation and fair pay. While the legislators have revised their own remunerations, they should also look at the legitimate demands of others with the same empathy and seriousness.