Karnataka MLAs bunk but take home a full salary

Bengaluru, Feb 12: With a monthly salary of Rs 65000, which is being paid from public money, one would expect regular attendance from that person. The Karnataka Legislative Assembly probably has one of the poorest attendance and in the 224 member house.

They are either protesting or are out of town and yesterday's attendance was a poor 40, which has caused a lot of discontentment among the public.

CTS or the Cost to state:

The monthly salary of a legislator in Karnataka is Rs 65,000. In addition to this they are also given Rs 1,000 per day allowance, which is for attending meetings.

Further a travel allowance of Rs 25,000 per month is given to the legislators for a constituency visit. This amount is quite high especially for MLAs who are from constituencies in Bengaluru.

While Rs 1,000 is the allowance given to them for attending meetings in Bengaluru, Rs 1,500 is the amount for meetings outside the city.
Wait there is more- In addition to the constituency visit allowance of Rs 25,000 the MLA's are also permitted to claim Rs 20 per kilometer for any visit they make, be it personal or official.

How much do they work:

The morning sessions of the assembly are alright. There is almost a full house. A visit to the assembly in the afternoon would show several empty benches. Take for instance a proceedings that took place last week. In the morning session, there were 90 MLAs but by afternoon the count had dropped to 40.

Now if they bunk the afternoon session, it does not mean that it is considered as a half day's job. The attendance is signed in the morning, which shows it as a full day in office.

In fact the session of yesterday was the worst in recent times. There were just 40 members in the house. Many had bunked while some were protesting.

The attendance scam:

For some strange reason the registers would show that the MLA's take home their full salary, despite bunking. This is quite easy. They land up in the morning and sign the attendance.

They sit in the house for sometime and then walk out never to return for the day. It is still counted as a full day's attendance.

There have also been a good number of cases where the MLAs have not signed on the attendance register, but still manged to take their full salary.

It is sufficient if they produce medical bills in such cases. The joke around Vidhan Soudha is that there are more medical bills compared to files.