Gift of relief to central employees, government increased dearness allowance by 2%, will get direct benefit in salary

Shiv Shankar Savita- The long wait of more than one crore central employees and pensioners of the country is finally over. On Saturday, April 18, the Central Government approved a 2 percent increase in Dearness Allowance (DA). After this decision, now dearness allowance has increased from 58 percent to 60 percent, which will directly increase the salary and pension of employees and pensioners. According to sources, this increase will be considered applicable from January 2026, which means employees will also get the benefit of arrears. Usually the government amends DA in January and July, but this time the announcement was delayed and the decision came out in mid-April. Earlier, the employees were waiting for this announcement since the beginning of March.

Benefit given under cost of living adjustment

Dearness Allowance is an important ‘cost of living adjustment’ given to government employees, the purpose of which is to reduce the impact of rising inflation. It is a fixed percentage of the basic salary, which helps in maintaining the purchasing power and standard of living of the employees. The increase in DA has a direct impact on the monthly salary of employees and pension of pensioners. This decision has come at a time when employee organizations are active in their demands regarding the proposed 8th Pay Commission. The National Council-Joint Consultative Mechanism (NC-JCM) in its memorandum to the government has demanded a higher fitment factor of 3.83. If this demand is accepted, the minimum basic pay may increase from Rs 18,000 to around Rs 69,000.

A suggestion has also been made to expand the scope of the definition of family.

Additionally, the organization has also suggested expanding the scope of the definition of “family” in salary calculations to include dependent parents. Besides, it has also been recommended to limit pay inequality and further improve the allowances according to inflation. In this cabinet meeting, the government has also taken some other important decisions. ‘Sovereign Maritime Fund’ has been approved with a corpus of Rs 13,000 crore, which aims to provide affordable and stable insurance protection to Indian ships. This is expected to strengthen maritime trade. Apart from this, it has been decided to extend the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana till 2028. Under this scheme, an additional budget of Rs 3,000 crore has been allocated to strengthen road connectivity in rural areas.