Srinagar, Mar 09: Providing big relief to the central government employees and retired pensioners, the government has decided to restore their three pending installments of Dearness Allowance (DA) and Dearness Relief (DR) from July. This was announced by the Finance Ministry on Tuesday in Rajya Sabha. Clearing the air, the Finance Ministry said that three pending instalments of Dearness Allowance (DA) for central government employees and Dearness Relief (DR) for pensioners will be restored from July itself. This, notably, will be done as part of the Central government’s 7th Pay Commission recommendations.
In a written reply, Minister of State (MoS) for Finance Anurag Thakur assured that the pending DA and DR instalments ((January 1, 2020, July 1, 2020 and January 1, 2021)) will come into effect from July 2021. These installments of DA were put on hold in view of the Covid-19 pandemic situation last year.
“Three pending instalment of Dearness Allowances of central government employees and Dearness Relief for pensioners to be restored prospectively. The rates will be subsumed in the cumulative revised rates of DA,” Anurag Thakur said.
Moreover, the Union Minister said that freezing the DA hikes helped the government save more than Rs 37,000 crore and added that this money was used in tackling the Covid-19 pandemic last year.
At this time of coronavirus crisis, the restoration of the three pending DA and DR instalments will bring major relief to over 60 lakh pensioners and roughly 50 lakh central government employees.
At present, the central government employees are getting DA of 17 per cent. A four per cent DA hike was approved for government employees last year. While this was meant to come to effect from January 1, 2021, it was delayed due to the pandemic.
The Finance Ministry further added that the pending instalments of dearness allowance for the said employees will be “subsumed in the cumulative revised rates effective from 1 July, 2021.”
The Finance Minister had earlier said that in view of the crisis arising out of Covid-19, it has been decided that the additional instalment of dearness allowance (DA) payable to central government employees and dearness relief (DR) to central government pensioners, due from 1st January, 2020 shall not be paid. It had also said that the additional instalments of DA & DR from 1 July 2020 & 1 Jan 2021 shall also not be paid.
