7th Pay Commission: Will allowance committee submit report on Thursday?

Has the wait for higher allowances for the central government finally over? The allowance committee is likely to submit its recommendations under 7th Pay Commission by Thursday to Finance Ministry, a media report said.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will be returning to India from his official trip to United States and Russia on Thursday. Thus, this is when the allowance committee planning to submit the recommendations report, as reported by The Sen Times. 

However, the government has not given any official confirmation regarding the submission of the report. 

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Jaitley in August last year, had formed  Ashok Lavasa committee to look into the demands of nearly 1 crore central government employees and pensioners for provisions of higher dearness and house rent allowances. 

The report was expected to be submitted by October. But, since then the submission has been delayed. 

Last week, there were media reports which stated that the frustrated by the delay in getting higher allowances under 7th Pay Commission central government employees' union are planning to go on nationwide strike.

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Moreover, there were also reports that some members of the committee were flying outside the country which has caused this delay.

However, the committee was expected to submit the report by April 18 after the "crucial" meeting held on April 6, which did not happened. 

Apart from allowances, the panel will be giving suggestions on House Rent Allowances to the government. Under the 7th Pay Commission, HRA should be paid at the rate of 24%, 16% and 8% of the new Basic Pay, depending on the type of cities.  

Employees' unions demanded HRA at 30, 20 and 10%. 

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Other recommendations that included a change in the present system of accounting, wherein pay and allowances are clubbed and it would be difficult to bifurcate these. Out of 196 allowances, the 7th Pay Commission report had recommended abolition of 52 and subsuming of another 36 into larger existing ones.

Further, the Reserve Bank of India in its recently released minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee meeting, warned that the implementation of the 7th CPC could impact the inflation. 

"In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects," the central bank said.