7th Pay Commission: Central government employees may get higher allowances from April 1

Central government employees may get higher allowances from April 1, according to several media reports. The higher allowances would be in accordance w the recommendations made by the Seventh Pay Commission.

While the other pay hikes under the Seventh Pay Commission were approved by the Union Cabinet in June last year, a decision for allowances had been referred to a committee headed by the Finance Secretary, according to a report by Zee News.

"The 7th Central Pay Commission (CPC) had recommended HRA at the rates initially from 24%, 16%, and 8 % and whenever DA reaches 50% it will be increased to 27%, 18%, and 9%, The panel also said that s and when the DA reaches 100% the HRA will be revised to 30%, 20% and 10% for X,Y, and Z cities respectively. The Pay Commission also recommended doing away with 53 of the 196 allowances and merging a few others," the report said.

Apart from this, the committee has proposed to abolish 52 allowances, subsume 36 allowances into existing allowances or proposed a new one. Out of the existing allowances, it has been proposed that 12 should be retained without changes, the other allowances would be tweaked, the report said.