BJP crorepati MPs forgoing salary is a joke on poor Indians

The Association for Democratic Reforms has been analysing candidate’s affidavits submitted to the Election Commission, since the 2002 Gujarat assembly elections, with the aim of increasing transparency and accountability in Indian politics. ADR extracts data from the sworn affidavits provided by the candidates themselves, such as their declared assets and liabilities, any criminal cases they have been charged with, and so on. ADR usually publishes these on the website myneta.info. To avoid or make up for any errors, ADR also provides links to the original affidavits on the Election Commission website.

After hearing that NDA MPs would be forgoing their salaries for 23 days due to the completely washed out Budget Session of Parliament for 2018, which ended today April 6, we took a look at the declared total assets of a few BJP Rajya Sabha MPs on myneta.info. We looked only at BJP MPs, as there is some confusion about whether only BJP or all NDA ministers are forgoing salaries. Though the announcement included all NDA MPs, subsequently some NDA allies have said they were not even consulted on the move.

Here is what we found. Piyush Goyal has declared assets worth ₹95+ crore, Amit Shah ₹34+ crore, GVL Narasimha Rao ₹28+ crore, Ravi Shankar Prasad ₹22+ crore, Prakash Javadekar ₹11+ crore, Smriti Irani ₹8+ crore, Dharmendra Pradhan ₹3+ crore and Nirmala Sitharaman ₹2+ crore.

Declared assets of more MPs may be viewed at the link above.

We find it unlikely that any such MPs with assets worth crores would feel the pinch of forgoing a few day’s salary due to Parliament dysfunction. In fact, it’s not only just another BJP jumla, but also a cruel joke in poor taste on the millions of poor and low income Indians, whose annual income ranges from ₹1,000 to ₹55,000 in a year.