Higher DA for Central Govt employees

The Cabinet will discuss a proposal to hike dearness allowance by six per cent for Central Government employees for the second time this year, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Aug 29, 2007, 20:04:26 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Union Cabinet will discuss giving twin monetary benefit to about 50 lakh Central Government employees on Thursday when a proposal to hike dearness allowance by six per cent for the second time this year and amending the Bonus Act to bring more employees under the ambit will be considered.

This would be for the first time since 1999 that the government plans to hike dearness allowance of its employees by 12 per cent in a year. For the first six months of 2007, the government had already announced six per cent dearness allowance.

If the Cabinet approves the new proposal, the employees will get 41 per cent of their basic and dearness pay as the allowance. In January this year, it had gone up from 29 per cent to 35 per cent.

It was only in 1998-1999 that the government hiked dearness allowance by 16 per cent but then the next hike was of only 2.1 per cent.

Timed before the festival season, the increase would be applicable from July 1, 2007 and will cost government exchequer additional burden of about Rs 3,000 crores.

In addition to higher dearness allowance, about 35 lakh government employees may get higher bonus of Rs 1,000. This is a possibility as the government has proposed increasing in the eligibility criteria from Rs 6,500 per month salary to Rs 10,000.

While more government employees will be covered, the government also wants to increase the bonus amount from Rs 2,500 to Rs 3,500. The hike will give relief to lower level employees of the central government from the increasing inflation rate, government official said. The proposal would cost the government about Rs 2,000 crores.

The Cabinet will also consider the Labour ministry's proposal to amend the Bonus Act 1965, enabling similar bonus for private sector as applicable to the Central government employees. The proposal is in tune with the Constitutional provision of same pay for similar work. The amendment will be applicable to entire industry sector.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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