Salaries and perks to disqualified AAP MLAs stopped

Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel said if an MLA was suspended or disqualified, every facility given would have to be stopped.

Salaries and other benefits being provided to the 20 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs who were disqualified for holding offices of profit have been stopped.

The 20 MLAs disqualified are Alka Lamba, Adarsh Shastri, Sanjeev Jha, Rajesh Gupta, Kailash Gahlot, Vijendra Garg, Praveen Kumar, Sharad Kumar, Madan Lal Khufiya, Shiv Charan Goyal, Sarita Singh, Naresh Yadav, Rajesh Rishi, Anil Kumar, Som Dutt, Avtar Singh, Sukhvir Singh Dala, Manoj Kumar, Nitin Tyagi and Jarnail Singh. (PTI)

Salaries to all the legislators are disbursed by the Delhi Assembly Secretariat.

Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel said if an MLA was suspended or disqualified, every facility given would have to be stopped.

“The salaries of 20 MLAs, who had been disqualified by the Election Commission, were stopped after I got a communication in this connection last month. Their February salaries have not been released,” Goel said.

With salary and allowances, an MLA gets around Rs 83,000 per month in Delhi.

Acting on a complaint of advocate Prashant Patel, the Election Commission on January 19 had recommended the disqualification of the 20 AAP MLAs for holding offices of profit when they were appointed as parliamentary secretaries to the ministers.

President Ram Nath Kovind had accepted the EC’s opinion on January 20. The MLAs have challenged their disqualification order in the high court.

The HC had refused to stay the Centre’s notification disqualifying the MLAs, but restrained the EC from taking any “precipitate measures” such as announcing dates for bypolls to fill the vacancies.

After conducting hearing on a day-to-day basis, the high court on February 28 reserved its order on the issue.

The 20 MLAs disqualified are Alka Lamba, Adarsh Shastri, Sanjeev Jha, Rajesh Gupta, Kailash Gahlot, Vijendra Garg, Praveen Kumar, Sharad Kumar, Madan Lal Khufiya, Shiv Charan Goyal, Sarita Singh, Naresh Yadav, Rajesh Rishi, Anil Kumar, Som Dutt, Avtar Singh, Sukhvir Singh Dala, Manoj Kumar, Nitin Tyagi and Jarnail Singh.

Alka Lamba, who represented Chandni Chowk constituency, confirmed that her February month salary was not credited and she was also not being invited for the Assembly Committee meetings.

“I get Rs 53,500 as salary and Rs 30,000 more for office purposes. Besides we also get around Rs 1000 per committee meeting. All these facilities have been stopped. The MLA office has also been shut ever since the EC’s disqualification decision came,” Lamba said.

Another disqualified legislator, Sanjeev Jha, reiterated the same thing.