Govt to implement 6th Pay Commission from January

Kolkata: In a move that will give a much-awaited breather to its employees, the state government is likely to hike the salary of its employees from January, as the Bengal government is set to implement the sixth Pay Commission from the current month.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in the September 2019, had announced a hike in the minimum basic pay for the state government employees.

The basic pay of the government employees will now be Rs 17,990 from Rs 7,000. She had also announced a gratuity hike from Rs 6 lakh to Rs 10 lakh.

Banerjee also made it clear that the employees would receive their revised salary from January 1, 2020. The state government accepted the sixth Pay Commission's recommendations.

The salary hike will come into effect through the merger of basic pay and Dearness Allowance in the new pay structure.

For instance, those having a minimum basic pay of Rs 7,000 will now have a gross pay of Rs 17,990 which is minus House Rent Allowance (HRA).

Taking HRA, the gross salary will go up to Rs 20,148.

The pay revision will cost the state exchequer an additional amount of Rs 12,000 crore

annually. It is expected that the state Finance minister Amit Mitra will announce the additional expenses incurred by the government in the next fiscal.

It may be mentioned that the Sixth Pay Commission headed by Prof Abhirup Sarkar was formed on November 27, 2015, to restructure the salaries of the state government employees.

The Chief Minister, on a number of occasions, had blamed the erstwhile Left Front government for the delay in implementation of the pay panel's recommendations.

The Left Front government had allegedly received the Pay Commission report in 2006, but it did not give effect to the report till 2008.