NEW DELHI, Aug 12: ``Please may we have some more,'' MPs asked the government today in an impassioned four-hour discussion on raising MPs' salaries and allowances. The unscheduled debate took up a majority of the Rajya Sabha's time, with dissenting Left parties isolated on their high moral ground.

In the end, Information and Broadcasting Minister Jaipal Reddy assured members that the government would take a ``very quick and favourable'' decision on the issue. Indian parliamentarians were the least paid in the world, he said, adding that there was a genuine need to increase their emoluments. The government was aware that salaries had not been raised for nine years, he said.

The subject, clearly very close to MPs' hearts, generated a lot of heat when Left party members said there was no need to increase the current Rs 1,500 monthly salary. Members from BJP, Shiv Sena, Congress and Janata Dal united in bemoaning their ``poverty-stricken'' existence and lambasting the Left.

``MPs would die of hunger if their rations did not come from their constituencies,'' S S Ahluwalia (Congress) declared. Unless salaries were revised, Satish Agarwal (BJP) said, ``MPs can either become corrupt or gobankrupt.''

``Please share with us your secret of survival,'' BJP member Ramdas Agarwal requested his Left colleagues who said they managed on Rs 500 a month. This was after CPI(M) member M A Baby said that Left MPs contributed their entire salary to their parties and then received only 25 per cent back. While agreeing that facilities should be increased, Baby differed on the demand to hike salaries. ``This will send a wrong signal to the people,'' he said.

Responding to members' demands for a bill to increase MPs' emoluments, Reddy said that the government was alive to the issue and had set up a committee to go into the matter but its recommendations had not found favour.

The reports of several committees on the subject were already with the government, he said, promising MPs that he would do his best to settle the matter satisfactorily.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.