Cabinet approves 7th CPC recommendations

NEW DELHI: The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations during its meeting. The Centre had earlier in earlier in January set up a panel headed by Cabinet Secretary P. K. Sinha to process the recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission, which is expected to change the remuneration of 47 lakh central government employees and 52 lakh pensioners. The Seventh Pay Commission in its report to the government had recommended an overall 23.6 percent increase in salaries and pension of all central government employees. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had in his Budget for 2016-17 provisioned Rs. 70,000 crore towards the Seventh Pay Commission, which is around 60 percent of the incremental expenditure on salaries. The Pay Commission’s recommendations are due from January 1, 2016. The implementation of new pay scales recommended by the Seventh Pay Commission is estimated to put an additional burden of Rs 1.02 lakh crore on the exchequer annually. The Commission was set up by the former UPA government in February 2014 to revise remuneration of the central government employees.