Indian MPs get pay hike: How much will they now earn? How does the salary compare with other nations?

Indian members of Parliament (MPs) will take home 24 per cent pay hike from April. The Central government has approved the increase in salaries, allowances and pensions of MPs, with retrospective effect from April 1, 2023.

The last revision of MPs’ salaries was carried out in April 2018 to bring their earnings in line with inflation, a notification at the time said. The rise in remuneration of lawmakers is calculated on the basis of the Cost Inflation Index.

Let’s take a closer look.

How much will India’s MPs get now?

Members of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha will receive a monthly salary of Rs 1.24 lakh, a jump from their current remuneration of Rs 1 lakh per month.

As per a gazette notification issued by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs on Monday (March 24), the sitting MPs’ daily allowance has been raised to Rs 2,500 from Rs 2,000.

Former MPs will receive a pension of Rs 31,000 per month from the previous Rs 25,000 per month. The additional pension for every year of service in addition to five years has been raised from Rs 2,000 per month to Rs 2,500 per month.

MPs in India are also entitled to certain perks and privileges, such as office allowance, constituency allowance, free travel and government housing.

With the latest salary hike, the government’s total annual expenditure on all 788 MPs – 543 in the Lok Sabha and 245 in the Rajya Sabha – will be Rs 3,386.82 crore, reported Mint.

How do MPs’ salary hikes compare with average Indians’?

The new salary of India’s MPs is more than eight times of the average Indian’s.

The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation’s data projected the per capita income of India in 2022-23 at Rs 1.72 lakh, or nearly Rs 14,333 every month.

As Mint noted, this means that a sitting MP earns roughly nine times more than the average income of an Indian worker, while an ex-lawmaker makes more than twice as much.

Lawmakers deciding their own salary hike has long been contentious. Opponents argue that an independent commission should be tasked with these revisions and not the MPs themselves.

This has again come into focus amid the pay increase as wages of employees in many sectors, including the informal, have failed to adjust to the surging cost of living.

How much do other countries’ MPs make?

The basic salary of MPs in the United Kingdom will have a 2.8 per cent rise to £93,904 (about Rs 1.04 crore) from April. Currently, the UK lawmakers take home £91,346 every year, besides other expenses. In the UK, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) is responsible for determining the salary hike of MPs.

The United States has not seen a salary bump for lawmakers on Capitol Hill since 2009. The annual salary of the members of the US Congress is fixed at $174,000 (about Rs 1.5 crore), with no automatic cost-of-living adjustment for 15 years. The US lawmakers also receive perks including paid travel and housing costs.

A bill on government funding that would have increased the salary of members of both chambers – the House of Representatives and the Senate – by $6,600, or 3.8 per cent, was defeated last year.

Australian MPs have been pocketing a 3.5 per cent pay hike since July 2024, taking home A$233,650 (about Rs 1.3 crore) a year. As per the decision of the Remuneration Tribunal, an independent body that determines the pay of federal politicians and bureaucrats, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is getting a base salary of roughly $607,500 (Rs 3.3 crore) and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton $432,250 (Rs 2.3 crore).

The average annual salary of a full-time worker in Australia is $98,218 while the median annual salary is $67,600, as per the Australian Bureau of Statistics’s data released last year.

Last week, the Pakistan Cabinet approved a 188 per cent pay hike for federal ministers, ministers of state, and advisers to PKR 519,000 (Rs 1.5 lakh). This comes after the Pakistan Parliament passed a bill to raise the salary of its MPs from PKR 218,000 (Rs 66,545) to PKR 519,000.

The annual average income of Japan’s lawmakers is ¥25.3 million (Rs 1.4 crore).

The base salary for MPs in Canada is $203,100 (Rs 1.2 crore), while the PM earns double the salary of MPs — currently $406,200 (Rs 2.5 crore). Cabinet ministers, House Speaker, and the opposition leader get an additional $96,800 (Rs 58 lakh) annually, besides the MP salary. These salaries are set for a raise in April, with MPs estimated to pocket a $6,700 (Rs 4 lakh) increase, Cabinet ministers a $13,400 (Rs 8 lakh) hike, and the PM a $13,400 bump.

With inputs from agencies