Friday, 22 October 2021 | PNS | New Delhi
In a Diwali gift, the Union Cabinet on Thursday hiked Dearness Allowance and Dearness Relief by 3 per cent to 31 per cent, which will benefit about 47.14 lakh Central Government employees and 68.62 lakh pensioners.
The Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the approval to release an additional installment of Dearness Allowance (DA) to Central Government employees and Dearness Relief (DR) to pensioners with effect from July 1 to compensate for price rise.
The combined impact on the exchequer on account of both dearness allowance and dearness relief would be Rs 9,488.70 crore per annum. This increase is in accordance with the accepted formula, which is based on the recommendations of the 7th Central Pay Commission, said Information Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur, briefing media.
Earlier in July, the Government had restored the dearness allowance and dearness relief and increased the rate of allowance from 17 per cent to 28 per cent. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the central government had frozen the three additional installments of the DA and DR, which were due from January 1, 2020, July 1, 2020 and January 1, 2021.
The Cabinet also approved PM GatiShakti National Master Plan, including implementation, monitoring and support mechanism, for providing multi-modal connectivity.
The Prime Minister, on October 13, had launched a Rs 100 lakh crore national master plan for multi-modal connectivity to develop infrastructure to reduce logistic costs and boost the economy.
It targets to cut logistic costs, increase cargo handling capacity and reduce the turnaround time.
