7th Pay Commission: Who is responsible for the delay?

With the financial year coming to an end, the central government employees are still waiting for an answer. When will we get higher allowance under the 7th Pay Commission? The committee which was formed by the government on higher allowance has failed to meet its deadline to submit the report. 

There are more than 56 lakh employees who will be getting higher allowances under 7th Pay Commission. 

Its been more than nine months since the government has formed 7th Pay Commission recommendation committee on higher allowance. In June last year, after the implementation of 7th Pay Commission, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced the formation of Lavasa panel under the chairmanship of Ashok Lavasa, to examine the suggestions on allowance. 

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According to a India.com report, a Finance Ministry official has said that "Neither Prime Minister Narendra Modi nor Jaitley responsible for the delay in implementation of higher allowance."

The members of the allowance committee along with National Joint Council of Action (NJCA) leaders will be meeting next week where Lavasa committee is expected to submit the report after discussion with employee representatives, the report said. 

NJCA is a joint body of unions representing central government employees.

Also, the report mentioned that the Union government is planning to pay the revised allowances under the new pay scale from the next financial year. 

Earlier, the Lavasa committee was expected to submit the report in October, but since then it got delayed. 

The committee is yet to submit the report on House Rent Allowance (HRA) to the government. As reported by Zeebiz earlier, under the 7th Pay Commission, HRA should be paid at the rate of 24%, 16% and 8% of the new Basic Pay, depending on the type of cities while unions demanded HRA at 30, 20 and 10%. 

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In a reply to a question Lok Sabha, on March 10, Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal, said that the committee has not submitted its report to the government but the deliberations of the committee are in the final stages.