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Come April 1, women in HP to get ₹1,500 aid per month: Sukhu
The scheme, however, would not cover employed women and benefit around five lakh people at an annual expenses of ₹800 crore from the state exchequer
Himachal Pradesh chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu said on Monday that the women aged between 18 and 60 in the state would get financial assistance of ₹1,500 per month from the upcoming financial year, starting April. The aid under the Congress’ flagship Indira Gandhi Pyari Behna Sukh-Sammaan Nidhi Yojana was among the 10 major promises of the Congress ahead of the Himachal Pradesh assembly elections in 2022.
The scheme, however, would not cover employed women and benefit around five lakh people at an annual expenses of ₹800 crore from the state exchequer. The exact modalities of the scheme are being worked out, the chief minister said.
Addressing mediapersons in Shimla, Sukhu said that the decision reflects the government’s sensitivity towards women and the amount would help in their financial and social upliftment.
The government had already started the first phase of the scheme from February 1, providing ₹1,500 to woman aged 18-60 from Lahaul and Spiti district and women aged over 60 across the state.
The Sukhu government is going ahead with the scheme with an eye on Lok Sabha polls despite the state being in deep financial mess. The hill state is already under a debt of ₹86,000 crore and the scheme will put an additional burden of over ₹800 crore on the exchequer.
The government will soon begin the process of filling out forms of all eligible women for the scheme, he said.
The chief minister pointed out that the government has already fulfilled its guarantees of providing the Old Pension Scheme, benefitting 1.36 lakh employees; Rajiv Gandhi Start-up Scheme; English medium schools from Class 1 in all government schools; minimum support price for cow and buffalo milk procurement and promoting natural farming by minimum support price for wheat and maize.
Payment of arrears as per 6th Punjab pay commission notified
The Himachal Pradesh government has issued a notification to the employees and pensioners for payment of arrears of revised pay scales as per the recommendations of sixth Punjab pay commission, officials said.
According to the notification, beneficiaries will get 0.25% of the arrears along with monthly salaries and pensions. To be sure, this means that the government would pay 3% of the arrears every year.
The government has also notified the employees about the payment of arrears of dearness allowance (DA) instalments from July 2022.
4% DA payable from July 2022 will be included in the salary for April and before that, arrears of about 18 months of DA will be paid in instalments. Employees will get 1.5% of DA arrears along with every month’s salary in 2024-25 financial year.
The decisions to pay the arrears according to the sixth Punjab pay commission was taken by the Jai Ram Thakur-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state.
However, the state government is yet pay gratuities and earned leave compensations at increased rates to the employees who retired between January 2016 and December 2021.
The BJP government in Himachal had paid ₹50,000 each to the employees as the first instalment of arrears of revised salary. The government has to pay about ₹10,000 crore as arrears and the Congress had raised the issue of non-payment ahead of the assembly elections in 2022.
