With less than 10 months to go for the Assembly elections in Punjab, the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance has started doling out favours, and the latest is a parting gift to its own MLAs.
Last week, the Parkash Singh Badal government appointed seven more MLAs as chief parliamentary secretaries, taking the total number to a record of 25. These appointees will enjoy the status of cabinet ministers – they can't participate in the Cabinet or take any decision on files, but will enjoy the perks cabinet ministers are entitled to.
These include a luxury car with a yellow beacon, a police escort vehicle, an office in the secretariat with staff, a fully-furnished government house, salary and other allowances adding up to over a lakh of rupees a month, as well as a travelling allowance of Rs 1,500 per day. By virtue of being elected as MLAs, these legislators are already entitled to Leave Travel Allowance of upto Rs 3 lakh a year as well as free electricity and water, a steno or assistant, a cook, a telephone operator and other such staff.
Pre-poll generosity
This largesse comes at a time when the state’s finances are in a mess. Punjab has consistently defaulted in paying back loans and has delayed releasing salaries and pensions. It has also mortgaged government property such as welfare homes and circuit houses to raise funds.
The idea behind the largesse, of course, is to keep its MLAs in good humour in the run up to the polls. The Constitution restricts the ministry to only 15% of the strength of the House. By appointing MLAs as Chief Parliamentary Secretaries, the government has bypassed the Constitution-mandated limit, appeasing those whom it cannot induct into the ministry.
Including the chief minister and deputy chief minister, the Punjab cabinet already has 18 ministers – the maximum number of ministers permissible in the 117-member Assembly. Given that the Speaker and deputy Speaker also enjoy Cabinet rank, the latest CPS appointments mean that nearly two-thirds of the ruling alliance’s 72 MLAs enjoy the pay and perks of cabinet ministers.
Just last year, the state had almost doubled the salaries and allowances of its ministers and MLAs.
With two thirds of the ruling alliance’s MLAs taken care of, the remaining one third are unhappy and have demanded chairmanships of state boards and corporations, which also have generous perks. There is, however, an exception. Former Indian hockey captain Pargat Singh, a SAD MLA, who was offered the post of CPS declined to take oath. He has been in a running battle with the government against the setting up of a Solid Waste Plant in his constituency and thought that the offer was only to placate him.
Across parties
Former chief minister Amarinder Singh, who is now heading the Punjab unit of the Congress, has described the government’s decision as “insensitive and irresponsible” pointing out that the government did not have money to pay salaries and pensions. Badal was “busy keeping his MLAs in good humour by throwing leftover crumbs of power at them at the fag end of his term,” said Singh. It’s another matter that the Patiala royal also appointed CPSs when he was in power.
CPS appointments in Punjab are already before the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The government made its first CPS appointments soon after it returned to power is 2012, which is when a few lawyers filed a Public Interest Litigation. The High Court reserved its orders on this petition last year. These same lawyers have now filed another PIL, pleading that it be merged with their 2012 petition.
In 2005, the Himachal Pradesh High Court had quashed appointments of 12 Chief Parliamentary Secretaries and Parliamentary Secretaries calling them “a fraud” on the Constitution. The court ruled that the chief minister had no power to make such appointments and that it was a wasteful expenditure of public money. But then, the state government under the Congress’s Virbhdara Singh circumvented the ruling by passing a legislation in the Assembly empowering the CM to appoint CPSs. The Opposition BJP supported the Bill at the time, and when it formed the government in 2007, its chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal also appointed CPSs. The state now has nine CPSs. Perhaps Badal may draw a lesson from Himachal Pradesh in case the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashes the Punjab appointments.
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