7th Pay Commission Update: The salary of Central government employees is expected to increase once again as another Dearness Allowance (DA) hike may come for them in July. According to several media reports, the Central government employees will receive another salary hike soon. It must be must noted that the DA & DR are revised twice a year, based on the retail inflation data.
7th Pay Commission Latest Update
The report on retail inflation for the month of April is due for release. The inflation in March has increased to 7% from 6.1% in February. The inflation jumped mainly because of a rise in food items.
The reports further said that the DA of Central government employees is likely to be increased by 4 percent in July, which would take Dearness Allowance to 38 per cent.
The Union Cabinet in March 2022 had approved 3% hike in dearness allowance (DA) under the 7th Pay Commission, taking the DA to 34% of the basic income. More than 50 lakh government employees & 65 lakh pensioners were benefitted from it.
An important point to mention here is that since July 2021 when the freeze was lifted, the DA as well as DR have seen 3 hikes and the salary of central govt. employees has almost doubled.
What is DA and DR
The dearness allowance is provided to the central government employees and the dearness relief is given to pensioners to deal with the rising rate of inflation.
Due to the Covid-19, the Centre had withheld 3 installments of DA & DR for January 1, 2020; July 1, 2020; & January 1, 2021.
But the government increased the DA & DR for its employees as well as pensioners to 28% from 17% in July 2021. Then in October 2021, the central government employees witnessed another jump of 3% in DA. After that, the dearness allowance rose to 31%, effective from July 2021.
And in January 2022, the DA & DR will be paid to the employees at a rate of 34%, increasing from the earlier rate of 31%.
