New Delhi: MPs will no longer be able to decide their own salaries, finance minister Arun Jaitley announced on Thursday. But his corresponding decision to double the parliamentarians' pay angered a middle class upset at the absence of sops for it in the budget.

Jaitley referred to the public's longstanding resentment of the MPs' ability to decide their own pay and said the law would be amended to provide for automatic five-yearly revisions, indexed to inflation, instead.

While this was widely welcomed, Jaitley's move to double the MPs' salaries from Rs 50,000 per month, increase their pensions, and rework their constituency and meeting allowances and expenses left the middle-class taxpayer miffed. Parliamentarians' pay was last raised 10 years ago.

The salary of the President is set to rise, as is that of the Vice-President (see chart). Both hikes will have retrospective effect from January 1, 2016, and will need amendments.

Senior Congress politician Ahmed Patel welcomed the move to divest MPs of their right to decide their own pay.

"It is good that in budget there is systematic inflation-linked index to increase MP salaries," Patel tweeted. "This will save MPs from the embarrassment of deciding and voting for increasing their own salaries. However, (at the) same time, there should have been incentives for salaried middle class in budget."

Former Rajya Sabha member and CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury, erstwhile member of a parliamentary committee on salaries and allowances, said he had long ago suggested that an MP's salary be fixed as that of the cabinet secretary plus Re 1.

Yechury claimed that the CPM had always been opposed to MPs deciding their own pay, but described Thursday's announcement as an election gimmick.

Javed Ali Khan of the Samajwadi Party, however, said that those who criticise MPs over their salaries and perks are ignorant about the work that parliamentarians do.

"They think that all we do is come to Parliament and shout. They do not realise that we are on call round the clock; our homes are always open to people; and we have to often help them out financially," Khan said.

"Barring a few seniors, most MPs' bungalows are not personal spaces of the members but are shared with people from their constituencies. How are we to provide for all this?"

Prime Minister Narendra Modi told party MPs that parliamentarians' practice of hiking their salaries used to invite criticism, so his government had acted. "No (earlier) government had done this," he was quoted as saying.