Patna:
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has sanctioned a 100% raise for all elected members of its panchayats or councils that govern villages, blocks and districts.
His cabinet today doubled the salaries and allowances for elected representatives in 8,000 different panchayats across the state, which will cost the government nearly an extra Rs 100 crore annually.
The decision comes after months of protests by those affected, but what may have swung the deal in their favour is that the national elections are months away, and Mr Kumar's party, the Janata Dal (United) has said that it may contest all 40 parliamentary seats in the state.
Mr Kumar governs Bihar in partnership with the BJP - an alliance that has won two consecutive terms - but he has warned that he will end the collaboration if the BJP picks Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as its presumptive prime minister.
Mr Modi, who was re-elected for the third time in December, is the BJP's most popular leader, but he has been accused of not doing enough to check the communal riots in his state in 2002, in which hundreds of Muslims were killed. Allegations against him - the severest accuse him of complicity in the riots - have not been proven in court, and both Mr Modi and the BJP have rejected them. But Mr Kumar and his party have suggested that the Gujarat Chief Minister lacks "secular credentials" and is, therefore, not an acceptable leader of the National Democratic Alliance, the coalition led by the BJP, in which Mr Kumar's party is a senior member.