Hyderabad: When Telangana is facing mounting debt, fat salaries for the Chief Minister and ministers and the government paying their income-tax with state funds is getting huge flak from different quarters. The income-tax alone runs into a few crores of rupees. The Madhya Pradesh government had recently ordered that it would not pay the income-tax of its ministers.
During the previous BRS government, the salary of MLAs was increased by 163 per cent to Rs 2.5 lakh, making them the country’s highest paid. The salary consists of their constituency allowance, perks and benefits besides other subsidies.
Former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao had justified the salary hike by 72 per cent to get a monthly package of Rs 4.21 lakh as against the previous payout of Rs 2.44 lakh to each MLA. Ministers, chief whip and whips have been getting a monthly package of Rs 4 lakh.
Rao had asked the media not to undermine the services of legislators by terming the pay hike as a `loot of public money’ as he argued that a higher pay to legislators will keep them free from corruption.
Talking to Deccan Chronicle, BJP spokesperson Kishore Poreddy said: “Public representatives getting the highest salary in the country are sending out a message of rude and feudal mentality that we are a class apart, especially when the state is reeling under a huge debt trap and public are burdened with heavy taxes.
“Our Chief Minister gets paid even more than the Prime Minister. When the Chief Minister's income-tax that is paid by the public exchequer is taken into account, it rivals the salary of the President,” Kishore Poreddy said. He said the BJP-ruled states of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Uttarakhand had taken a decision to stop paying income-tax of the CM and ministers from the exchequer.
He said the share of Telangana tax revenue to its GSDP was one of the highest — indicating the citizens of the state paid the highest taxes in the country, which was evident with highest petrol and diesel price burden.
Rohit Palamakula, a chartered account, said that a person has to tentatively pay Rs 12.5 lakh per annum as the income-tax for Rs 4.21 lakh per month salary (for the CM), Rs 12.1 lakh income-tax per annum for Rs 4.11 lakh salary per month (for ministers) , and Rs 6.08 lakh income-tax per annum for the Rs 2.5 lakh per month salaries of MLAs and MLCs.
Talking to Deccan Chronicle, Forum for Good Governance president M. Padmanabha Reddy said that they have submitted a plea to the state government to make a big cut in the salaries of lawmakers and avoid paying their income tax from the state exchequer.
The forum has filed a PIL in the High Court seeking a direction to the state government against the practice, as paying the income-tax for Chief Minister and his team was arbitrary, illegal and violative of Article 14 of the Constitution, said Padmanabha Reddy.
The forum in its petition also submitted that income-tax paid by the government was taxpayers’ money and there is no confidentiality in it. The forum said it was not able to give the correct amount of income-tax paid by the government as the general administration department was refusing to provide any information.
