NEW DELHI: The Centre on Monday notified a 24 per cent hike in the salaries of Members of Parliament with effect from April 1, 2023, taking their monthly salaries from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 1.24 lakh.
The hike represents a 148 per cent raise over the base monthly salary of Rs 50,000 that they were drawing in 2010. As part of the revisions notified by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, the MPs’ daily allowance has also been raised from Rs 2,000 to Rs 2,500. The monthly pension of former MPs has been hiked from Rs 25,000 to Rs 31,000. The notification further says that the additional pension for every year of service of an MP in excess of five years of service would now be Rs 2,500 a month instead of Rs 2,000.
Ironically, the revision of MPs’ salaries and allowances came on a day when the Rajya Sabha remained fully dysfunctional and the Lok Sabha partly.
The revision has been notified under the Salary, Allowances and Pension of Members of Parliament Act on the basis of Cost Inflation Index specified in the Income Tax Act of 1961. The last MP salary and allowance revision and the most substantial one was done by the BJP-led NDA regime in 2018 when then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced across-the-board hike in the salaries of the President, Vice-President, Governors and MPs.
Jaitley had proposed a law to standardise the salary of MPs and provide for an automatic revision every five years by indexing it to inflation.
The President’s salary was then raised from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 5 lakh; Vice-President’s from Rs 1.25 lakh to Rs 4 lakh and Governors from Rs 1.10 lakh to Rs 3.5 lakh. While piloting the Bill at the time, Jaitley had famously said it would protect MPs from the criticism of taking a raise.
As per this law, the MPs’ salary revision, which last happened on April 1, 2018, was due on April 1, 2023. This explains why Monday’s notification says the salary revision of MPs would apply from April 1, 2023. Today’s notification would also mean a broad upward revision in other allowances the MPs get. The 2018 revision had increased the constituency allowance of MPs from Rs 45,000 to Rs 70,000 and office allowance from Rs 45,000 to Rs 60,000. These allowances will rise further now.