GANDHINAGAR: Gujarat governor O P Kohli on Friday gave his approval to ‘The Gujarat Salaries and Allowance of Members, Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly , Ministers and Leader of the Opposition Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2018’ which had been passed by the state assembly in the monsoon session in September. The bill had received unanimous support in the assembly.It will be a windfall for 182 Gujarat MLAs who got a whopping 65% hike in their monthly salaries. The salary of MLAs has been raised from just over Rs 70,727 to Rs 1.16 lakh per month. Ministers and those in key posts in the state assembly will draw a monthly salary of Rs 1.32 lakh instead of the previous Rs 86,000. The MLAs will get arrears from February 2018. The total burden of arrears on the exchequer will be more than Rs 6 crore.The salaries and allowances of all MLAs was last revised way back in 2005. The MLAs are expected to start getting new salaries and arrears from November.While the previous pay structure took the basic salary of an under secretary as the criterion to determine the remuneration of MLAs and office-bearers, the new bill will determine pay by basing it on the basic salary of the deputy secretary.A total of seven bills were passed during the monsoon session of the Assembly convened last month. Of these seven, the governor has given assent to six bills while one has been referred to the President of India, said legislative affairs secretary K M Lala.

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