7th Pay Commission: DA hiked by 3 per cent, what CG employees can expect next

New Delhi, Feb 20: As expected there was some news regarding the 7th Pay Commission.

The Union Cabinet increased the dearness allowance (DA) by three percent and said that it would effective from January 1 2019. The move is set to benefit at least 1.1 crore Central Government employees and pensioners.

The Cabinet has approved additional DA of 3 per cent over the existing rate of 9 per cent to government employees and dearness relief to pensioners from January 1, 2019, finance minister Arun Jaitley told reporters after the Cabinet meeting.

The hike will benefit about 48.41 lakh central government employees and 62.03 lakh pensioners.

This increase is in accordance with the accepted formula, which is based on the recommendations of the pay panel. Jaitley further said the combined impact on the exchequer on account of both DA and DR would be Rs 9,168.12 crore per annum and Rs 10,696.14 crore in 2019-20 (for a period of 14 months from January 2019 to February 2020).

With the DA hike done, the question is what can the CG employees expect next. OneIndia had reported that the government is unlikely to go ahead with a hike in the basic minimum pay. A source said that there may not be any more announcements in this regard and the CG employees would have to be content with the announcement.

Any further announcement could be expected only from the next government, the source also added. The 7th Pay Commission had recommended that the basic minimum pay be set at Rs 18,000, but the CG employees are expecting Rs 26,000.