JAIPUR – Officials verified on Thursday that Jagdeep Dhankhar, a former Vice President and member of the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly, has asked for his pension to start up again. Two days ago, he sent in the application. He had quit his job as Vice President on July 21 because of “health issues.”
A representative from the Rajasthan assembly secretariat said that state statutes say that an MLA’s pension stops when they are elected to a constitutional office, such a minister, governor, or president. Dhankhar was a Congress MLA for the Kishangarh assembly constituency from 1993 until 1998. He got a pension until July 2019. It stopped when he became Governor of West Bengal on July 20, 2019.
Dhankhar has applied again for the pension he is owed for his former stint as Vice President, because his term is now over. The procedure has begun, and the pension will start on the day his resignation was accepted.
A former MLA in Rajasthan gets a pension of ₹35,000 a month for one term, and it goes up with each term and with age. Dhankhar is 74 years old, thus he is eligible for a 20% raise, which brings his total monthly pension as a former legislator to ₹42,000. In addition to the pension he gets as a former Vice President and Member of Parliament, he will also get this pension from the state assembly.
Dhankhar has mostly stayed out of the public glare since he quit, which has led to suspicion in political circles. Opposition parties have asked why he quit so suddenly and why he hasn’t been seen since, with several leaders demanding to know how he is doing. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, on the other hand, recently said that these reports were not true. He said that Dhankhar’s choice was only for health reasons and that the opposition should not make a big deal out of it.