PM, President and MPs take 30% pay cut to help combat coronavirus

Suspension of MPLAD funds for two years to save Rs 7,900 crore

President Ram Nath Kovind, Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union ministers, members of Parliament, and state governors will take a 30 per cent pay cut in 2020-21 to contribute to the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI) to help fight Covid-19. Besides, the member of parliament local area development (MPLAD) fund will remain suspended for 2020-21 and 2021-22, and the money, to the tune of Rs 7,900 crore, will be transferred to the CFI.
 

The Cabinet cleared an Ordinance on Monday to slash salaries of parliamentarians and ministers, Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar said. Kovind, Naidu, and the governors also offered to take a 30 per cent cut in salaries, for which no ordinance is needed, he added. “Charity begins at home,” Javadekar said.
 

While the minister stated the amount to be collected through suspending MPLAD funds, he did not disclose the sum to be mopped up by reducing the salaries. He also did not divulge whether the cuts would be from the basic salary or gross salary and allowances.
 

However, Press Information Bureau Principal Director General K S Dhatwalia later said in a tweet that it was only the MPs’ salary and not the pension and allowances that would be reduced.

For a member of Parliament this would mean a Rs 30,000 reduction from his or her basic monthly salary of Rs 1 lakh. If all 780 sitting MPs are taken into account, this would mean a Rs 28.08 crore contribution to the CFI in FY21.

While most MPs welcomed the move on salary cut, the decision to suspend MPLADS for two years led to some dissonance in the Opposition.
 

Randeep Singh Surjewala, spokesman for the Congress, said while his party supported the salary cuts, suspending MPLAD funds was a disservice to the constituents and would undermine the functions of MPs.
 

R K Sinha of the BJP, elected from Bihar, has spent all his MPLAD funds. As a Rajya Sabha MP, who does not have a specific constituency, he is entitled to do that. He has completed all his instalments (the last contribution was to the PM’s relief fund) and no money is pending. The suspension of funds , he said, will not affect him materially. “If the PM has decided to commandeer it in this time of crisis, he is perfectly within his rights as the Commander in Chief of an army, which is fighting a war, to do so.”
 

Congressman Rajeev Gowda’s term in the RS ends in June. The last tranche of his MPLAD contribution, he said, was to have been made to a local government-owned hospital in Bengaluru, ironically, to help set up a Covid-19 testing facility. “I am trying to understand whether the money will still be available for this purpose,” he said.
 

Congress MP Jairam Ramesh disagreed with his party’s line on MPLAD. “I welcome the decision on MPLAD. I have been arguing for long that the Rs 7,000 crore given to MPs and MLAs annually for development works should be used as a corpus for state funding of elections.”
 

With inputs from Archis Mohan