New Delhi: The
Seventh Pay Commission is likely to propose pay hike for central government
employees, which will be highest since first pay commission’s proposal in 1947.
Seventh Pay Commission Secretary
Meena Agarwal
The first pay
commission was constituted in 1946, while its submitted its report on May, 1947
to the interim government of India. ‘Living wage’ — the guiding principle for
the first Pay Commission — is long past.
‘Now is Seventh
Pay Commission time’, which is also to take in to account living cost of
central government employees cost of their appraisal.
The cost of
living measures the annual cost of necessities for one adult to live a secure,
yet modest, lifestyle by estimating the costs of housing, food, transportation,
health care, other necessities, and taxes.
Every government
employee likely has a six-member family including his parents. So, Seventh Pay
Commission is likely to increase salaries and allowances to minimise the impact
on the cost of living for 50 lakh central government employees and 56 lakh
pensioners including dependents.
Inflation
pushes living cost, inflation, is an economic concept. The effect of inflation
is the prices of everything going up year by year. A central government
employee got salary Rs 3000 in 1987 under Sixth pay commission, now he gets Rs
80,000 with two promotion, this is called inflation, the price of everything
goes up. When the price goes up, the salaries go up.
Every
successive Pay Commission has roughly tripled pay. This means that simply by
hiking up living cost for 10 years, a government employee would have tripled
his pay.
The first pay
commission was recommended Rs 55 salary to the lowest earning employee, second
Rs 80, third Rs 185, fourth Rs 750, fifth Rs 2550 and sixth Rs 6660.
Accordingly,
the Seventh Pay Commission is likely to propose minimum basic salary Rs 20,000
of central government employees, sources in the pay panel said.
The main reason
behind the proposal of Seventh Pay Commission is to hike highest pay since 1947
on the account of Dearness Allowance (DA). The central government employees
will get Dearness Allowance likely 125 percent at the time implementation of
Seventh pay Commission. They never got such type of Dearness Allowance hike
before implementation of any Pay Commission.
Dearness
Allowance always merges with salaries and allowances under every pay
commission’s proposal.
“The Seventh
Pay Commission is ready with recommendations and the report will be submitted
soon,” according to sources.
Headed by
Justice Ashok Kumar Mathur, the Seventh Pay Commission was appointed in
February 2014 and its recommendations are scheduled to take effect from January
1, 2016.
The government
constitutes the Pay Commission almost every 10 years to revise the pay scale of
its employees and often states also implement the panel’s recommendations after
some modifications. The first pay commission was constituted in 1946, second in
1957, third in 1970, fourth in 1983, fifth in 1994, sixth in 2006 and seventh
in 2014.
As part of the
exercise, the Seventh Pay Commission held discussions with various
stakeholders, including organisations, federations, groups representing civil
employees as well as defence services.
Meena Agarwal
is the secretary of the Commission. Other members are Vivek Rae, a retired IAS
officer of 1978 batch and Rathin Roy, an economist.
The Sixth Pay
Commission was implemented with effect from January 1, 2006, the fifth from
January 1, 1996 and the fourth from January 1, 1986.
Regards, E.R.Iyer
