Despite getting a 40 percent hike in their salary, MLAs and MLCs in Andhra Pradesh are unhappy and are demanding more to catch up with their counterparts in Telangana.
BJP MLA from Visakhapatnam North Penmetsa Vishnu Kumar Raju even held a press conference, where he reportedly said:
If one wants to be clean in politics, this salary is not enough.We need to be paid more. The hike is not enough to manage the growing expenses.
Both the Telugu states of Telangana and Andhra recently passed a bill to hike the salaries of their legislators. While the ones in Telangana now earn Rs 2.75 lakh per month, those in AP are only paid Rs 1.25 lakh. This is their basic salary excluding allowances.
"We are a small number unlike the government employees. The government should have been generous enough to double our pay pack.Even a sharp hike would not be a burden on the exchequer," one TDP legislator from Kurnool district told the Times of India.
The legislators in both states have been heavily criticized on social media sites.
"People on social media do not know the ground situation. Many of us are first time MLAs. Some of us have even resigned from our comfortable jobs to serve people.The cost of running our offices is high these days," a first-time MLA from north Andhra told TOI.