The state cabinet on Thursday extended its largesse to the chairmen and vice-chairmen of boards, corporations, commissions and committees with a hefty hike in salaries, allowances and other facilities.

The chairmen and vice-chairmen would now get Rs 25,000 salary instead of Rs 8,000 per month, a jump of more than 300 per cent. They would also get Rs 1,000 as daily allowance, cabinet co-ordination department principal secretary Ravikant told reporters in a post-cabinet briefing on Thursday.

The chairmen and vice-chairmen — in the ranks of cabinet minister, minister of state, deputy minister — would also get Rs 18,000, Rs 17,500 and Rs 17,000 as entertainment allowances respectively, Ravikant said.

The chairmen and vice-chairmen would be entitled to 20 per cent of the salary, daily allowance, entertainment allowance, as housing grant if they could not get a government accommodation, the principal secretary said.

For transportation, the people would be entitled to Rs 15 per km if they use their own car and can use up to 3,000km of hired car. They would also get Rs 1,000 to recharge their cell phones besides a landline phone facility at their offices and residences.

When asked about the total number of board corporation’s chairmen and vice-chairmen and the hike’s impact on the state exchequer, Ravikant, who feigned ignorance about the numbers, said he “can’t say at hand about the impact it would have on the state exchequer”.

The cabinet also approved the proposal that dependents of those killed in Maoist violence would get ex-gratia from the state government even if the deceased/victims have criminal antecedents, Ravikant said, adding that the dependents, however, must not have criminal cases lodged against them.

The state, at present, gives Rs 1 lakh as ex-gratia to the families/dependents of the victims of any violent incident.

Similarly, the permanently disabled persons and seriously injured people get Rs 50,000 and a maximum of Rs 20,000 for treatment, Ravikant said.

To help farmers, the cabinet also gave its nod for setting up two agriculture marketing hub at Nalanda and Muzaffarpur under public-private partnership mode.

Under the integrated-value chain at these two places, 11 modern market complexes would be developed in 11 districts.

The cabinet also approved Rs 1,300 crore as grant to Bihar State Electricity Board for a period of April to August 2012, Ravikant said.