The Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh, the newly elected Speaker, Deputy Speaker, MlAs, ministers and chief parliamentary secretaries will have to wait for pay hike, as the State government on Tuesday withdrew the scheduled bills, following Opposition walkout on the issue.
To the surprise of everyone, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh withdrew the scheduled salary hike bills from the House saying since it was a matter of consensus and the Opposition MlAs had staged a walkout, the bill should be withdrawn on moral grounds.
The bill, proposing an increase in salaries and perks by over 25 per cent, would come up in the next Assembly session now.
The Chief Minister said "it would not sound good that the ruling party passed the bills in the absence of Opposition MlAs and it is likely that they would blame us later and say the State government passed the bill unilaterally to increase their salaries."
Singh was irked over frequent walkout by Opposition BJP and said it was unfortunate that they walked out of the House. Speaker Brij Biharilal Butail was all set to table the bills relating to increasing salary of House members, including ministers, Speaker and Deputy Speaker in the House, when the Chief Minister intervened and asked for withdrawing all four amendment bills.
Sources said it was for the first time in the history of the State that any government had withdrawn a bill related to salaries of Chief Minister, ministers, CPSs and MlAs, which was scheduled to be tabled in the House.
The proposed bills, would have increased the salary of Chief Minister from Rs 39,000 to Rs 65,000, that of Cabinet Minister from Rs 36,000 to Rs 50,000, that of Minister Of State from Rs 33,000 to Rs 48,000 and that of Deputy Minister from Rs 32,000 to Rs 45,000 per month.
Besides the bill had also proposed to increase telephone allowance of ministers from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000 and also permit a sumptuary allowance of Rs 30,000 per Minister per month. The bill related to salary of Speaker and Deputy Speaker had proposed to increase the amount from Rs 36,000 to Rs 50,000 for Speaker and from Rs 33,000 to Rs 45,000 to Deputy Speaker and telephone allowance was proposed to be doubled from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000 besides permitting a sumptuary allowance of Rs 30,000 per month for them.
Another bill had proposed to increase salary of Chief Parliamentary Secretary from Rs 23,000 to Rs 40,000 and that of Parliamentary Secretary from Rs 22,000 to Rs 35,000 per month. The withdrawn bill related to salaries of MlA's and formers MlA's had proposed to increase salary of a sitting legislator from Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000, telephone allowance increase from Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 per member, constituency allowance was to increase from Rs 35,000 to Rs 60,000 and office allowance was to double from Rs 5000 to Rs 10,000 per month.
Former legislators were also to be benefited with their pension increasing from Rs 18,000 to Rs 22,000 per month but the bill was withdrawn by the government after the Opposition staged walkout over amendment bill to the HP state co-operative societies act, passed by the House.