Govt planning to bring Ordinance on salary deduction

Daily Pioneer: Dehradun: Wednesday, 05 August 2020.

Facing flak after a Right to Information (RTI) query revealed that majority of the BJP MLAs had made less contribution to the Covid-19 fund from their salaries as compared to their Congress counterparts; the state government has indicated that it is planning to bring in an ordinance on the subject.

Cabinet minister and state government spokesman Madan Kaushik told media persons at secretariat here on Tuesday that the government order (GO) regarding salary deduction of ministers and MLAs for Covid-19 was clear that 30 percent of the salary and allowances should be deducted.

He added that the state government could bring in an ordinance for the deduction in the salary and allowances. The statement of the minister assumes significance as the issue was proving to be a major embarrassment for the state government and ruling BJP.

The issue came into limelight recently when based on a RTI the Congress MLA from Kedarnath, Manoj Rawat claimed that the BJP MLAs are not following the order of the government on salary deduction.

 He said that while a sum of Rs 57600 is being deducted from the salary of all 11 MLAs of Congress party, only 13 MLAs of BJP are having deduction of Rs 57600 from their salaries.

 Elaborating further he said that 16 MLAs of BJP are having a deduction of Rs 30000 per month while four MLAs of the ruling party are having a deduction of Rs 12600 per month. Apart from them there are 13 BJP MLAs who are having a deduction of Rs 9000 per month.Taking the BJP’s senior leader and chief spokesperson Munna Singh Chauhan to task the Kedarnath MLA claimed that a sum of Rs 30000 per month is being deducted from his salary.

Chauhan incidentally had organised a press conference and had accused the Congress MLAs for not showing interest to contribute for Covid-19 fund.The disclosure provided ammunition to the Congress leaders to attack the government.

Former chief minister (CM) and general secretary of All India Congress Committee (AICC) Harish Rawat and other Congress leaders launched blistering attacks on the BJP government for failing to get necessary deductions from its own MLAs.