Chennai sources have made a statement that at a time, when Tamilnadu is facing an agrarian crisis, the Tamilnadu Assembly on Wednesday decided to give the state legislators an almost 100% pay hike. The monthly salaries of the 234 MLAs in the state Assembly was doubled from Rs 55,000 to Rs. 1,05,000. The monthly pensions of the legislators were hiked to Rs 20,000.
Sources have stated that the Assembly also increased the phone bill allowance from Rs 5,000 to Rs 7,000. The report added that there was a Rs 50 lakh addition to the MLA constituency fund, which now stood at Rs 2.5 crores.
Meanwhile the state government had last hiked the salaries of the MLAs in 2011, when the AIADMK government under J Jayalalitha pegged the monthly salary at Rs 55,000. The constituency fund was also hiked from Rs. 5,000 to Rs 10,000.Further it was stated that between 2007 and 2017, the total rise in salaries has been a whopping 500 percent. In 2007, the salaries were bumped up from Rs 16,000-Rs 20,000.
