Highlights of 7th Pay Commission recommendations

New Delhi, Nov 19: Following are the highlights of the recommendations made by the 7th Central Pay Commission, headed by Justice A K Mathur, which submitted its report to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today:

* 23.55 per cent increase in pay and allowances recommended * Recommendations to be implemented from January 1, 2016

* Minimum pay fixed at Rs 18,000 per month; maximum pay at Rs 2.25 lakh

* The rate of annual increment retained at 3per cent

* 24 per cent hike in pensions

* One Rank One Pension proposed for civilian government employees on line of OROP for armed forces

* Ceiling of gratuity enhanced from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 20 lakh; ceiling on gratuity to be raised by 25 per cent whenever DA rises by 50 per cent

* Cabinet Secretary to get Rs 2.5 lakh as against Rs 90,000 per month pay band currently

* Financial impact of implementing recommendations in toto will be Rs 1.02 lakh crore - Rs 73,650 crore to be borne by Central Budget and Rs 28,450 crore by Railway Budget.

* Total impact of Commission's recommendation to raise the ratio of expenditure on salary and wages to GDP by 0.65 percentage points to 0.7 per cent

* Military Service Pay (MSP), which is a compensation for the various aspects of military service, will be admissible to the defence forces personnel only

* MSP for service officers more than doubled to Rs 15,500 per month from Rs 6,000 currently; for nursing officers to Rs 10,800 from Rs 4,200; for JCO/ORs to Rs 5,200 from Rs 2,000 and for non-combatants to Rs 3,600 from Rs 1,000

* Short service commissioned officers will be allowed to exit the armed forces at any point in time between 7 to 10 years of service

* Commission recommends abolishing 52 allowances; another 36 allowances subsumed in existing allowances or in newly proposed allowances.

* Recommendations will impact 47 lakh serving govt employees, 52 lakh pensioners, including defence personnel.

PTI