The Gujarat Assembly on Wednesday passed a bill to increase the salaries of MLAs by 64% and those of ministers, the Speaker, the Deputy Speaker and the Leader of the Opposition by 54%, reported PTI.

Salaries for MLAs will rise from Rs 70,727 to Rs 1.16 lakh a month. Ministers, the Speaker, the Deputy Speaker and the Leader of the Opposition will earn Rs 1.32 lakh a month now, against Rs 86,000 earlier.

The daily allowance of the MLAs was hiked to Rs 1,000 from Rs 200 and the monthly postal allowance of the Leader of the Opposition was increased to Rs 10,000 from Rs 1,000.

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The new salaries will come into effect retrospectively from December 2017, ANI reported.

The Salaries and Allowances of Members, Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly, Ministers and Leader of Opposition Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2018, was passed unanimously after being introduced in the House by Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Pradipsinh Jadeja. Salaries of MLAs in the 182-member Gujarat Assembly had not been revised since 2005, he said.

Jadeja said that monthly salaries of lawmakers in states such as Uttarakhand, Telangana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra are Rs 2.91 lakh, Rs 2.50 lakh, Rs 2.25 lakh and Rs 2.13 lakh respectively, while in Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Odisha, their salaries are over Rs 1 lakh.