7th Pay Commission: When will govt employees see higher pay scale, fitment factor; MSP’s hike stirs hope again

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi government has been approving a list of recommendations under 7th Pay Commission for a list of government employees. Recently, the government has given good news to soldiers by clearing annual clothing allowances. Meanwhile, even Assam state government has approved HRA allowances for their employees. Each time, government approves something which relates to 7CPC, a ray of hope is once again stirred up among 48 government employees who have been eagerly waiting for some clarity over their fitment factor and minimum pay scale demand beyond recommendation of 7CPC. Now the hope is fueled with government’s recent decision on hike in Minimum Support Price (MSP) for farmers.

The government has hiked the minimum support price (MSP) of 14 Kharif (summer sown) crops for the 2018-19 marketing season, as it was promised in Union Budget 2018-19 (to fix MSP at 1.5 times of the cost of production). This comes as a welcome step to address farmer’s distress in India.

It needs to be noted that, out of 14 crops, seven crops witnessed hike of more that 20% compared to last year.  

In case of these 48 central government employees, this simply means that the NDA government has enough money in their pocket to help even them after the gift to farmers.

These employees are demanding a fitment factor of 3.68 times with minimum pay scale of Rs 26,000. This is after the Union Cabinet revised their minimum pay to Rs 18,000 from previous Rs 7,000 per month, along with fitment factor of 2.57 in June 2016 leading to a major hike in all central government employees salaries.

It has been revealed that, the government may hike minimum pay to Rs 21,000 and fitment factor to 3.00 times. However, the NDA government at Centre claimed that they are not really looking to hike minimum pay beyond the recommendations provided in the 7th Pay Commission report recommendations.