CHANDIGARH: Haryana is spending almost Rs 30 crore annually on the pension of former MLAs and their dependents. Around Rs 26.40 crore is being spent annually on pension for former MLAs and Rs 3.11 crore on family pension to widows/dependents of former MLAs, according to information sourced from RTI data.
Senior Congress leader, Captain Ajay Singh Yadav, who was a member of the Haryana assembly for six terms for around 23 years on different occasions starting from 1989, gets a monthly pension of Rs 2,38,100. This is the highest amount paid as pension to any former legislator in the state. Former Haryana CM Om Parkash Chautala is a close second as he has been receiving a pension of Rs 2.22 lakh per month..
Jasm a Devi, the widow of former Haryana CM Bhajan Lal has been receiving two pensions. She gets an amount of Rs 99,619 per month for being the widow of Bhajan Lal and around Rs 61,000 per month for being a former member of the state assembly.
A total of 171 former MLAs receive a minimum pension of Rs 61800 and Rs 10,000 as travelling allowance per month. A total of Rs 3.11 crore is being spent annually on family pension to the wives of 128 former MLAs.
The Haryana assembly had in 2016 passed a law after which the monthly pension of former MLAs was capped at Rs 1,00,000, meaning any former legislator’s pension cannot go beyond Rs 1 lakh per month. However, the law only is effective prospectively, so all the former MLAs getting monthly pension higher than this amount were elected prior to 2016 their emoluments are calculated as per their tenure.
The Haryana government has also been providing a Rs 60 lakh loan for the construction/purchase of house and Rs 20 lakh for the purchase of vehicle to all legislators and former legislators. They can avail of this loan multiple times provided they pay the amount of the earlier loan back to the government. The salaries/pensions of the MLAs and former MLAs are considered a guarantee in these cases and they are provided a loan on a negligible amount of interest by the state assembly.
From 2010 to 2021, a total of 68 current and former MLAs took housing loans of around Rs 32.216 crore, and Rs 20.83 crore is yet to be returned. Similarly, to purchase vehicles, the members of the state legislature have taken loans worth around Rs 27.48 crore between 2004 and 2022 and have yet to return around Rs 9.96 crore. This information was provided by the State Public
Information Officer (SPIO) of the Haryana assembly on April 6 in response to an RTI application filed by Panipatbased RTI activist PP Kapoor.
Kapoor had asked the SPIO to provide complete information about the pension and family pension being withdrawn by the former legislators and their family members and the total amount of housing and vehicle loans taken by them from the assembly.
As far as income-tax is concerned, the state government was paying the income tax of the MLAs till 2018.
However, after the matter surfaced in data provided in response to an RTI application, the practice was stopped. The Haryana MLAs started paying their income-tax on their own after that. The state government had at the time even recovered funds paid for income-tax of the legislators by the state assembly.
