7th Pay Commission – CG Employees may have to wait longer for higher Allowances.

7th Pay Commission – CG Employees may have to wait longer for higher Allowances.

More than 48 lakh serving central government employees and 52 lakh pensioners have not received higher allowances under the 7th Pay Commission recommendations from August last year because the Union cabinet hasn’t still approved the higher allowances.

In October last year, Ashok Lavasa said he was ready with the report. But the government gave extension to the committee up to February 22, 2017 on the pretext of demonetisation and the government said that the cash crunch was the reason behind the delay in announcing higher allowances.

However, the panel which was ready to submit its report and got an extension without even asking for it, now seems to be buying more time.

According to the sources, it will now have a few more meetings before submitting its report to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

It was earlier reported that the panel would submit its recommendations to the government’s political leadership soon and the Centre could announce revised allowances any time after March 11, the day of counting the votes for the five Assembly polls, and probably before the second half of the Budget Session of Parliament ends. That timeline now seems doubtful. There were no conclusive decisions taken at the meeting last Friday. There will be some more meetings. For now, the panel is not ready to give its report to the Finance Minister,” the report said citing a senior government official aware of the developments.

Sources said. “The Cabinet is likely to approve the higher allowances in the next week as the Assembly election results in five states were declared yesterday and the model code of conduct enforced ahead of the elections ceased to be in operation with immediate effect.

However some sources indicate that the panel is yet to submit the report, hence its obvious that only after the report is submitted, it could be passed by the cabinet. So the mystery continues, no one knows if the report is submitted by the panel or not.

The Government is keeping everyone guessing.

The government sources said, the decision on allowances was postponed because the 7th pay commission wanted a number of allowances to be abolished or subsumed,  however Employee unions opposed it hence a new panel was formed to examine it.

The employees can’t receive the higher allowances without the Cabinet approval. In contrast, the higher allowances might not impact employees much but since Holi is round the corner, they will feel the pinch.”