CHANDIGARH: Twenty nine MLAs have been elected who were also members of the previous 14th Haryana Legislative Assembly, while 39 people have become MLAs for the first time in the latest assembly elections. There are also 22 such people who were members of the 13th or earlier state assemblies.
Although the constituency of every Lok Sabha MP in Haryana is nine times bigger than the constituency MLA of the state but as far as the pension amount received by former MPs is concerned, it is only one-third of the pension of former MLAs of Haryana.
Giving information on this subject, Punjab and Haryana High Court advocate and legislative affairs expert Hemant Kumar said that currently there was a legal provision to give a basic pension of Rs 50, 000 per month to every former MLA of Haryana who has completed one or more tenures after January 1, 2016, whereas for former MPs, the basic pension amount for one tenure is half of that, i.e. Rs 25, 000 per month. However, the provision of additional increase in the basic pension amount at the rate of Rs 2, 000 per year formore than one tenure is the same for both, i.e. former MLAs and MPs.
Not only this, after January 1, 2016, every former MLA of Haryana gets Dearness Relief (DR) every month on the basic pension amount of Rs. 50, 000 or the additional pension amount determined after serving more than one term at the same rate as the pensioners of Haryana Government get. From 1st January 2024, the rate of the said DR is 50 per cent, which is going to increase by three per cent to 53 per cent in the coming days, due to which the pension of every former MLA in Haryana, which is a minimum of Rs. 75, 000 per month today, will soon become Rs. 76, 500 per month. Not only this, if the pension amount of a former MLA is less than one lakh rupees, then he also gets a special travel allowance of Rs. 10, 000 per month. Thus, the pension of a former MLA in Haryana is three times more than the pension of a former MP who has been a member of Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha from the state. On the other hand, as far as former MPs are concerned, they do not get any DR on the pension amount of minimum Rs. 25, 000 per month. It is not given like the Central Government pensioners get.
Giving an example, Hemant said that BJP's Gyan Chand Gupta, who was the speaker of the 14th Haryana Assembly, although he lost the election for MLA from Panchkula Assembly Constituency to Congress' Chandramohan this time, was elected MLA from Panchkula for two consecutive terms in 2014 and 2019. Thus, he will get Rs 50, 000 as basic pension for the first term and Rs 10, 000 additional pension at the rate of Rs 2, 000 per year for five years for the second term, i.e. his total pension amount will be Rs 60, 000, on which he will get DR at the current rate of 50 percent which will be Rs 30, 000, which will make his total pension Rs 90, 000. Since it is less than Rs 1 lakh, he will also get a special travel allowance of Rs 10, 000 per month, which will further increase his pension to Rs 1 lakh per month.
In 2022, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government led by Bhagwant Mann in Punjab had amended the relevant law through the assembly and made a provision that even if a former MLA of Punjab has one or more terms, he will get pension for only one term. Although this legal amendment was challenged by some former MLAs in the High Court, the court did not give any stay. The matter is still pending before the division bench of the High Court. In Haryana too, from time to time, the demand has been raised that the former MLAs of the state should also be given pension for only one term, no matter how many times they have become MLA.