7th Pay Commission: Big news for central govt employees on DA, DR arrears

Lakhs of central government employees are waiting for good news regarding Dearness Allowance (DA) and Dearness Relief (DR). The meeting of the National Council of JCM, an organization representing the central government employees, has been fixed this month with the officials of the central government.

A meeting of the members of the National Council of JCM, Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) and the Finance Ministry will be held on June 26. This meeting was scheduled to be held on May 8 last month, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, this meeting was postponed. Since then there was speculation about its new date.

Shiva Gopal Mishra of the National Council of JCM said that the main objective of this meeting would be to pay the 7th Pay Commission DA arrears to the central employees and 7th Pay Commission DR benefits to the retired employees. The National Council of JCM has informed that this meeting will be chaired by the Cabinet Secretary of India.

Mishra said that the attitude of the Cabinet Secretary and the Finance Ministry regarding DA, DR arrears is very positive, because it is an issue related to 1.2 crore central government employees and pensioners. Therefore, the National Council of JCM is very optimistic about this meeting, they hope that good news will emerge out of the meeting.

The Central government had announced to resume the DA, DR of the employees from July 1, but nothing was officially said about the 3 outstanding DA. There are apprehensions among the employees regarding this. The employees are expected that the government will give their arrears along with the DA hike from July 1.

It may be recalled that the government had frozen three installments of dearness allowance of employees (1 January-2020, 1 July-2020 and 1 January-2021). Employees are getting 17% dearness allowance from July, 2019, because after that the next increase was to take place on January 1, 2020, which was frozen. That is, there has been no change in the dearness allowance of the employees for one and a half years, while it is amended every 6 months.

Source : DNA India