Varun Gandhi questions MPs’ right to hike own pay

New Delhi: BJP MP Varun Gandhi on Tuesday chose to question lawmakers’ repeated requests and power to seek an increment in their own compensation.

“When matters regarding salaries are raised recurrently, it makes me worry about the moral compass of the House. Nearly 18,000 farmers have committed suicide over the last one-year. Where is our focus?” Mr Gandhi questioned.

Mr Gandhi also raised concern over significant bills like the one on Aadhaar getting passed without any serious debate.

Raising the issue during the Zero Hour in the Lok Sabha, Mr Gandhi he asked for an external body to decide on salary hike for lawmakers. At a time, when cutting across the party line, the lawmakers gets united on the issue of  hike in their salaries, Mr Gandhi  wondered whether the MPs had  “earned” the 400% remuneration hike they had given to themselves in the last decade.

Breathing fire and hinting at the insensitivity, Mr Gandhi referred to the recent protests of Tamil Nadu farmers in the national capital and noted that they had drunk their urine and demonstrated with skulls of farmers, who had committed suicide, in order to strongly make their point.

 “A few weeks ago, a farmer from Tamil Nadu tried to take his own life in the national capital in order to register his protest against the suffering of farmers in the state.”

He lashed out: “ On July 19, the Tamil Nadu Assembly in a brazenly insensitive act, doubled the salaries of its legislators.”

Talking about the practice of the lawmakers, often raising demand for a salary hike, Mr Gandhi pointed out that the Jawaharlal Nehru Cabinet, in its first meeting, had taken a collective decision not to avail salaries for six months in view of the people’s sufferings at the time.

Giving examples from the past, Mr Gandhi went on saying; “Members of the Constituent Assembly, like Biswanath Das from Odisha, chose to draw only `25 a day instead of `45 a day, which they were entitled to, saying that he did not need/require any more.”

He also referred to “V.I. Muniswami Pillai, in 1949, which moved a motion in the Madras Assembly to impose a voluntary cut of `5 per diem in recognition of the suffering of the farmers. The Assembly unanimously passed the motion”.

He also told  the House that “Gandhiji” had written that “the allowances drawn by the Members of Parliament and various Assemblies must be in proportion to the services rendered to the nation”.

Hinting at the apathy, he said that it was “shameful” that the number of sittings in the Lok Sabha had dropped from 123 days a year in 1952 to 75 in 2016.

Pointing fingers at his own community, Mr Gandhi said: “If we look at our performance over the last two decades, barely 50% of the bills have been passed after scrutiny from Parliamentary Committees. When bills pass without serious deliberation, it defeats the purpose of having a Parliament.”

He maintained that “41% of bills introduced have been passed without discussion.”

“The Winter Session, 2016, hit a low point of 16 per cent. It is shameful. Taxation bills, as significant as Aadhaar, were passed within two weeks without being referred to a committee,” the MP from Sultanpur said.

Stressing on the issue for setting up an external body to advise the pay and other benefits of the lawmakers, Mr Gandhi said that “United Kingdom has an independent authority - Review Body on Senior Salaries - consisting of distinguished non-members, to advise the government on the pay and pensions of MPs.” He maintained that “such a mechanism sadly does not exist in India though Indian parliamentary democracy is loosely derived from that of the UK.” Drawing a comparison, Mr Gandhi said that “as compared to a 13 per cent rise in the UK, Indian lawmakers had raised their salaries by 400 per cent in the last decade.”