Peerzada Ummer
Early Times Report
srinagar, Feb 24: As the Jammu and Kashmir state is facing acute financial crunch; experts believe that it was the previous NC-Congress coalition which for the luxurious life style of ministers and legislators emptied treasuries due to which a common man in JK is facing the brunt at present.
The state during Omar Abdullah took a big leap over the Central Government and Members of Parliament (MPs) with the salaries fixed for every legislator is more than 30 thousand than the Lok Sabha members.
Besides hefty salaries, the Omar Abdullah government accorded attractive perks, free vehicles, security, medical allowance, housing allowance, travel allowance, housing loans, free accommodation, air, road travel, free electricity and drinking water the ministers and legislators .
The monthly salary of a State legislator was fixed by Omar as Rs 80,300 and was made entitled to a travelling allowance of Rs 1 lakh per annum. The MPs get only Rs 50,000 as monthly salary. The MLAs were accorded the facility of interest-free housing loan to be repaid in 72 instalments.
The Chief Minister's salary was raised from Rs 45,000 to Rs 90,000 per month while that of cabinet ministers hiked from Rs 40,000 to Rs 85,000 per month. The salary of Ministers of State, MLAs and MLCs was raised from Rs 40,300 to Rs 80,300 per month ministers. The salary of the Speaker was fixed as Rs 90,000 per month.
As the state every day was treading towards the economic breakdown every minister in Omar's cabinet was paid travelling allowance at the rate equivalent to the cost of petrol or diesel consumed. The Chief Minister was entitled to get travel allowance for travelling 1500 kms, while the travel limit for a minister was fixed as 1000 kms a month. Similarly, Minister of State (MoS) turned also supposed to get the travel allowance for travelling 800 kms a month.
In addition, every minister in the state became entitled to draw personal aviation insurance of Rs one lakh and premium was to be paid by the government. A minister was entitled to draw advance TA for journeys exceeding 200 miles and every member or a member of minister's family was entitled to reimbursement of Rs 50,000 a year on the production of railway receipt or air ticket.
MLA was allowed to get an advance for the purchase of a motor car. The government provided public telephones at the MLA hostel which were used by the members free of cost for local calls.
As for the appointment of personal assistants, any member was entitled to recommend any person who is a permanent resident of J&K other than a member of his family for the post of personal assistant. Besides this every member who has served as the member of constituent Assembly, Legislative Council or Legislative Assembly would be entitled to the pension of Rs 23,000 a month. For a MP, Rs 20,000 has been fixed as monthly pension. The government also doubled the sitting allowance for MLAs from 500 a day to 1000. As per the reports, rupees one-and-a-half crore used to be the annual expenditure on the petrol and telephone bills of ministers.
Last year, the reports came to fore that Omar's government expended Rs 22.58 crores to meet the Travel Allowance (TA), accommodation and telephone usage charges of the Council of Ministers and persons enjoying status of Ministers. The amount also included maintenance charges for state-owned aviation fleet. |
