Not right to hike MPs' salaries when jawans, farmers not getting dues: Congress

Taking a dig at the Narendra Modi government in the wake of a proposal for the doubling of MPs’ pay, Congress on Saturday said it was “not the right time” to raise lawmakers’ salaries when “farmers and jawans” are not getting their dues.

Congress has been targeting the government over the issue of prices of farm produce and has also accused it of working against the interests of jawans by not implementing the ‘One Rank, One Pension’ scheme.

“When farmers are deprived of fair MSP and jawans of the OROP, it is not the right time to hike salaries/pension for MPs. Instead a transparent mechanism should be explored to determine salaries/pension of MPs,” Ahmed Patel, political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, said on Twitter.

A parliamentary panel had pitched for a 100 per cent hike in salaries, constituency allowance and office allowance of MPs along with an approximately 75 per cent raise in pension of ex-MPs apart from facilities for their “companions” in place of “spouses”.

Currently, an MP gets a basic salary of Rs 50,000 added by Rs 45,000 each for constituency and office expenses, which makes it to Rs 1.4 lakh per month. They wanted to double it to Rs 2.8 lakh per month.

However, official sources said that the government is not willing to accept a majority of the recommendations made by the parliamentary panel, which is headed by Bharatiya Janata Party MP Yogi Adityanath.

They said that the parliamentary affairs ministry in its comments (Action Taken Report) sent to the panel on June 24 made it clear that it will not be able to consider a number of these recommendations even as it decided to send some others to the ministries concerned for taking an ‘appropriate’ view.