Raipur, Mar 20 (PTI) The Chhattisgarh government on Monday tabled in the state Assembly an amendment bill proposing to hike the pension and travel allowance of former legislators.

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Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ravindra Choubey tabled the Chhattisgarh Legislative Assembly Members Salary, Allowance and Pension (Amendment) Bill 2023, which also proposes to provide telephone and orderly allowances to former MLAs.

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Talking to reporters, Choubey said the bill will be passed in the House in the next couple of days.

The bill proposes a hike in pension of former MLAs from Rs 35,000 to Rs 58,300.

However, every former legislator will also be entitled to get an additional pension of Rs 1,000 per month for every one year after his/her first tenure of membership (excess tenure more than five years), the bill stated.

As per the bill, each incumbent member will be entitled to get an allowance of Rs 10 lakh per year for railway/air travel instead of the existing Rs 8 lakh per year. Similarly, this allowance will be increased from Rs 4 lakh per to Rs 5 lakh per year for former MLAs, it said.

Apart from this, former MLAs will be entitled to get telephone allowance and orderly allowance of Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000 respectively, it stated.

According to officials, earlier there was no provision of telephone and orderly allowances for ex-members.

The increase in pension and allowances is likely to put an additional annual burden of around Rs 16.96 crore on the state exchequer, they said.

The state Assembly had passed bills to hike the salaries of the chief minister, speaker, ministers and MLAs in July last year, and the move had caused an annual burden of Rs 6.81 crore to the state exchequer.

The Chhattisgarh legislative Assembly has 90 members.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)