With general elections schedule expected in a few days, Cabinet may consider raising dearness allowances (DA) and dearness relief (DR) by 10 per cent, benefiting 50 lakh government employees and 30 lakh pensioners, in its meeting scheduled on Friday.
This is for the second time that the government would hike DA since 2013. Earlier in September 2013, government had hiked DA by 10% to 90% of the basic pay and further if this hike too goes through then DA would stand at 100% of the basic pay. Further, the increase, if passed, will be effective from January 1, 2014 and will be included in the March salary.
The DA hike will cost around Rs 6,390 crore in 2014-15 and if two months of the current fiscal –January and February – are added, then the amount will increase to Rs 7,455 crore. Similarly, the annual outgo on account of DR for 12 months and 14 months will be Rs 4,684 crore and Rs 5,465 crore respectively.
Usually the government uses Consumer Price Index- Industrial Workers data of the past 12 months to decide upon quantum of DA hike. Thus, the retail inflation for industrial workers between January 1 to 31 December 2013 would be used to take a final call on the matter. According to the provisional data released by government on 31 January, the retail inflation for factory workers for the month of December stood at 9.13%.
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