7th Pay Commission: Surgical strike on black money to delay higher allowances
New Delhi: Taking the nation by surprise, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Tuesday night announced demonetisation of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes with effect from midnight on Tuesday, making these notes invalid in a major assault on black money, fake currency and corruption.
Higher allowances under 7th Pay Commission award may be delayed following surgical strike on black money carried out by the Modi government on black money, fake currency and corruption and ordinary transactions such as buying of vegetables from the local market etc might be hit for a month on account of this surgical strike but the government decides to announce for higher allowances when the situation is returning to normalcy.
"The process of higher allowances, which is likely to be implemented soon, may be delayed as now the government is busy for making situation normal after surgical strike on black money," A Finance Ministry top official told The Sen Times on Thursday on condition of anonymity.
He further said "the issue of increased financial activities after strike on black money may compel the government to keep in abeyance the higher allowances to get normalized the position. However the government wants to implement the higher allowances speedily…in a time bound manner."
"Fearing any eventual incident for surgical strike on black money in the country and in view of the current scenario, the government has decided to delay the announce of higher allowances," the official added.
He said that the central government employees unions are pressing hard on the government to announce the higher allowance even this difficult situation.
The 'Committee on Allowances' has already given final touch to its report. The committee met up with the deadline of four months given to it by the cabinet to submit the report, the Finance Ministry official confirmed.
The quantum of allowances may not vary from those proposed by the 7th Pay Commission as the committee on allowances sticks with the 7th Pay Commission's recommendations on allowances and the committee on allowances proposed higher allowances with retrospective effect from August 2016 but the central government employees unions demanded for implementation of the allowances with retrospective effect from January 2016, the official revealed.
We are ready to submit our report, when the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley calls up, the committee on allowances head Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa said recently.
The committee on allowances, which was set up in July this year on the direction of the cabinet, is looking into the provision of allowances other than dearness allowance under the 7th Pay Commission recommendations as the pay commission had recommended of abolishing 51 allowances and subsuming 37 others out of 196 allowances.
TST
CommentsComment