7th Pay Commission: 3% DA Hike Likely To Be Announced Next Month, Say Reports

7th Pay Commission: Even as the central government employees have been waiting for the July DA hike that will raise their salaries, the announcement is likely to be made soon. Though there is no official confirmation on the DA hike announcement date, media reports speculate that the decision is likely to be announced in September 2023.

As the retail inflation in India is getting hardened and hit a 15-month-high level in July, the government is expected to increase the dearness allowance (DA) by 3 percentage points to 45 per cent, as per the reports. The DA hike will be effective from July 1, 2023.

The dearness allowance for employees and pensioners is worked out on the basis of the latest Consumer Price Index for Industrial Workers (CPI-IW) brought out by the Labour Bureau every month. The Labour Bureau is a wing of the Labour Ministry.

“The CPI-IW for June 2023 was released on July 31, 2023. We are demanding a four percentage point hike in dearness allowance. But the dearness allowance hike works out to be a little over three percentage points. The government does not factor in hiking DA beyond the decimal point. Thus DA is likely to be increased by three percentage points to 45 per cent,” All India Railwaymen Federation General Secretary Shiva Gopal Mishra said recently told PTI.

He also said the expenditure department of the finance ministry will formulate a proposal to hike DA along with its revenue implication and will put up the proposal before the Union Cabinet for approval.

Currently, over one crore central government employees and pensioners are getting a 42 per cent dearness allowance.

DA is given to government employees, while DR is given to pensioners. DA and DR are hiked twice a year — January and July.

In the last hike in March 2023, the DA was increased by 4 per cent to 42 per cent. Given the current inflation rate, the next DA hike is expected to be 4 per cent, as per various reports.

Recently, various state governments, including Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Karnataka, Jharkhand and Himachal Pradesh, increased dearness allowance for their state government employees.