Madhu Agrawal
It refers to Union Finance Minister on March 23, 2017 arguing in Rajya Sabha that Parliament and not judiciary has power to spend public-money including on various privileges like pension to Parliamentarians. Role of judiciary starts and must continue when law-makers misuse their powers. Pension to Parliamentarians is one such aspect where law-makers legislated continuing pension to Parliamentarians even though pension to government employees recruited after a particular year has been discontinued. What more, now a Parliamentarian or spouse gets pension even for a single day membership of the Parliament. It would have rather been better if central government and Parliamentarians would have themselves decided to do away with unhealthy system of pensions to Parliamentarians rather than the matter would be reaching to the Apex Court.
It is significant that there is always unity amongst Parliamentarians of rival political parties regarding their mutual benefits like salary hike, perks, pensions and other facilities. Prime Minister has rightly focussed on presence of Parliamentarians in Parliamentary sessions by even offering opportunity of appointment with him for such Parliamentarians whose presence during the sessions is significant. It is often seen that Parliamentarians usually leave respective Houses after initial two hours. Same is observed at meetings of Parliamentary committees. System of bio-metric attendance should be adopted so that Parliamentarians attending sessions or meetings of Parliamentary committees may not endorse attendance just to get allowances.
Several Rajya Sabha members during zero-hour on December 2, 2015 very rightly demanded that salary of Parliamentarians should be one rupee more than that of highest paid bureaucrat Union Cabinet Secretary. Same formula should be adopted for all in legislative system including President, Vice President, Prime Minister, Union Ministers and others including judges, so persons holding such posts may get auto pay hike together with government employees rather than requiring separate legislations with big abnormal and unjustified jerks. It will ensure much required parity in pay-structure amongst top-most persons holding posts in legislature, bureaucracy and judiciary.
