7th Pay Commission Latest News Today: Arrears, DA hike and salary increase—what all money developments central government employees can expect

The government has assured that central government employees will get their due Dearness Allowance (DA) and Dearness Relief (DR) from July 1. However, what is not clear is their arrears. Central government employees were hopeful that with the restoration of their DA, they will be compensated for three pending DAs as well, which will proportionately also increase DR of pensioners.  However, there is an air of mystery shrouding the arrears part of the central government employees.  

See Zee Business Live TV Streaming Below:

Why central government employess DA were frozen? 

It is to be noted that the government had frozen DA and DR of central government employees and pensioners last year to tackle the situation emerging out of Covid 19 pandemic.  

What will happen to Arrears clearance

Though DA and DR restoration have government backing, what's bothering central government employees is whether they will be compensated for the three instalments of pending DAs for the period—January 1, 2020, July 1, 2020, and January 1, 2021 or not.  

A meeting in this regard was to take place in May. The National Council of JCM and the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) and the Ministry of Finance (Department of Expenditure) officials were allegedly supposed to meet and take a call on fate of over 1 crore central government employees. However, the meeting to solve the logjam on pending DAs was to take place on May 8 itself, but later it was deferred to the last week of May 2021 in the wake of 2nd wave of the pandemic.  

Likely DA hike

It is very much likely that once the DA is restored, the central government may get an 11 per cent hike, taking their current DA of 17 per cent to 28 per cent.  This will increase salary of these employees significantly and will help pensioners too as their DR will also see similar jump.  

Meanwhile, a report in Live Mint provided further clarity what is at stake for central government employees as far as their DA is concerned.  

Salary calculation 

"To calculate how much DA arrears of a central government employee is at stake, one just need to do simple arithmetic for 7th CPC Level-1 employee whose Grade Pay is Rs1800 and 7th pay commission salary ranges is Rs 18,000 to Rs 56,900," said Shiva Gopal Mishra, Secretary — Staff Side at National Council of JCM. He reminded that ₹18,000 is minimum 7th pay commission basic salary of a central government employee.

Mishra said that 4 per cent DA for January to June 2020, 3 per cent DA for July to December 2020 and expected 4 per cent DA for January to June 2021 is getting restored from 1st July 2021.