The finance minister has said that Parliament alone can decide who is entitled to pensions and the quantum; and he’s right. It is in the Constitution that public money can be spent only with the authority of Parliament. His comments came in the wake of the Supreme Court saying that the pension and perks to MPs seemed “prima facie” unreasonable and which is why the court sought responses from the Centre and the Election Commission on a plea, curiously from an MP, seeking to scrap pension and perks. The court also believes that 80 per cent of national legislators are crorepatis. While that may be so, it is only right that Parliament alone has the powers in spending any money from the Consolidated Fund of India.
It is a different matter that the ethics of legislators voting themselves cushy perquisites and pension for life even for representing the people in just one five-year term is open to question. They are picked by the people and are not government servants who may spend a whole career in service and hence are eligible for lifetime pension. Why should the people pay for MPs and MLAs in eternity while they serve terms only at their will? The arguments over pay and perks need not extend to the larger theme of judicial activism, which has tended to place the judiciary, the legislature and the executive on a collision course. It is best that the separation of powers is respected by all three pillars of the society lest the rumblings begin again on how these edifices are being destroyed by activism or excesses on the part of any one of them.
