Cabinet likely to clear seventh pay commission's recommendations today

The Union Cabinet is likely to take up the Seventh Pay Commission committee's report during its meeting scheduled for 29 June.

The recommendations submitted by the Empowered Committee of Secretaries, which was formed to look into recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission, will result in a hike in salaries of over one crore government employees and pensioners.

In January, the Centre set up a panel headed by Cabinet Secretary PK Sinha to process the recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission, which is expected to change the remuneration of 47 lakh central government employees and 52 lakh pensioners.

In its report to the government, the Seventh Pay Commission recommended an overall 23.6% increase in salaries and pension of all central government employees.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had in his Budget for 2016-17 provisioned Rs 70,000 crore towards the Seventh Pay Commission, which is around 60% of the incremental expenditure on salaries.

The implementation of new pay scales recommended by the Seventh Pay Commission is estimated to put an additional burden of Rs 1.02 lakh crore on the exchequer annually.

The Commission was set up by the former UPA government in February 2014 to revise remuneration of the central government employees.

--ANI