7th Pay Commission: Lavasa committee likely to take more time to submit report on allowances

7th Pay Commission: Lavasa committee likely to take more time to submit report on allowances

New Delhi, April 12: Central government employees may have to further await the higher allowances as per as the high-level committee led by Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa is yet to submit its report. Although the National Joint Council of Action (NJCA) expects the committee to submit its report to the government by this week, a top employee union official, while speaking to NDTV, claimed that the Lavasa committee could further delay its report. 

The hike in allowances is awaited since July 2016, when Centre raised only the basic component of the salaries of central government employees. The allowance(भत्ता) hike was deferred(स्थगित) owing to the anomalies (विसंगतियों)raised by employee unions over the abolition of 53 allowances and subsumption of 36 others into larger ones.

The Lavasa committee was initially provided a time period of four months to submit its report to Centre. Since it failed to submit its report, the Finance Ministry provided the committee an extension till February. Due to the five-state assembly elections and the imposition of model code of conduct, the report was not tabled.

While it was expected that the Lavasa committee would submit its report immediately following the elections, central government employees were disappointed (निराश) as no decision was taken yet regarding the allowances.

“As per the information we have, the committee is expected to submit its report to the government in next 4-5 days. Now, it is up to the Cabinet to take a swift call and approve the report at the earliest,” NJCA convenor Shiv Gopal Mishra said while speaking to India.com.

The implementation of allowance report would benefit a total of 47 lakh central government employees. So far, the workforce received only 14.3 per cent effective pay hike, despite being promised 23.5 per cent in the 7th Pay Commission report submitted by Justice (retd) AK Mathur. The implementation of higher allowance would allow them to realise the full pay hike.