ADVERTISEMENT

Panel To Review Seventh Pay Commission Allowances To Submit Report This Week 

The recommendations of the committee will be moved in a Cabinet note.

North Block which houses the Ministry of Finance. (Photographer: Prashanth Vishwanathan/Bloomberg)
North Block which houses the Ministry of Finance. (Photographer: Prashanth Vishwanathan/Bloomberg)

A panel to review allowances for Central government employees met for the last time on Thursday, and will submit its report to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley this week, a senior finance ministry official told BloombergQuint.

The recommendations of the committee headed by Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa will be moved in a Cabinet note, which the government will take up soon, the official said on condition of anonymity.

The committee was apprised of 14 existing allowances given by the Department of Posts, and ministries of railways and defence in its last meeting. These allowances were left out by the Seventh Central Pay Commission, and the panel sought more information and facts on them from the ministries concerned in Thursday’s meeting.

The committee has taken a final view on these 14 existing allowances, the official said without elaborating.

The committee, set up in June 2016 to review the recommendations of Seventh Central Pay Commission on allowances, was initially given four months to submit its report. The deadline was later extended till February 22, 2017.

The Seventh Pay Commission had recommended abolishing 52 out of the 196 allowances and subsuming 36 others into existing or newly proposed allowances. The Seventh Pay Commission had estimated that the remaining allowances will cost the government Rs 29,000 crore.

The Commission had recommended subsuming washing, uniform, tribal area and soap allowances, while abolishing the ones for shorthand and space technology.