Centre defends MP pay hike, says it's inflation-linked unlike state-level raises

New Delhi: A day after it notified a 24% salary hike for members of parliament, the Indian government defended the move as a structured adjustment rather than a discretionary decision.

In a statement on Tuesday the government said the revision, effective 1 April 2023, was based on a mechanism introduced in 2018 that linked MPs' salaries to inflation with the aim of preventing arbitrary increases.

The Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs notification, issued on 24 March, raised MPs’ monthly salaries from ₹1 lakh to ₹1.24 lakh. The government's statement emphasised that the revision was aligned with the cost inflation index (CII) under the Income Tax Act, ensuring automatic salary adjustments every five years.

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The system was introduced after Prime Minister Narendra Modi opposed MPs deciding their own pay in 2016 and suggested linking it to structured criteria, similar to pay commissions, the statement noted.

Before the 2018 amendment, MPs’ salary revisions were ad hoc and required parliamentary approval, often triggering public backlash. The last major hike before this was in 2010, when salaries were tripled from ₹16,000 to ₹50,000, leading to criticism that MPs were granting themselves an excessive raise.

Cherry-picked data?

The government also said several state governments continue to arbitrarily increase the salaries of their chief ministers and legislators.

According to the statement, recent examples of this include Karnataka, where chief minister Siddaramaiah doubled his own salary to ₹1.5 lakh a month and approved a 100% hike for ministers and MLAs, adding ₹62 crore a year to the state exchequer.

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Similarly, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) government raised lawmakers' salaries by 50% in 2024, while in 2023, Arvind Kejriwal’s administration approved a 136% salary hike for the Delhi chief minister and a 66% increase for MLAs, the government said.

However, the statement did not mention the salary hikes of chief ministers, ministers and MLAs in BJP-ruled states.

According to reports, the gross salary of the Gujarat chief minister is ₹3.21 lakh a month, including basic pay and allowances. The Uttar Pradesh chief minister's salary is ₹3.65 lakh a month, while the Maharashtra chief minister receives ₹3.40 lakh a month, including basic pay and other allowances.

State-level hikes

The structured revision of MPs’ salaries also contrasts with significant hikes in states such as West Bengal, Kerala, Telangana, and Himachal Pradesh over the years.

In Telangana, legislators became the highest-paid in the country after a 163% hike in 2016, with the chief minister’s salary rising to ₹4.1 lakh a month including basic pay and allowances.

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The government also pointed out that MPs’ salaries were temporarily reduced by 30% during the covid pandemic to contribute to national relief efforts—an unprecedented move that did not apply to most state legislators.

The statement said that the latest revision simply aligned MPs’ salaries with inflation over seven years, translating to an annual increase of just 3.1%.