By Janhvi Ahuja
The Cabinet Union approved the decision to set up the 8th Pay Commission to review and revise the salaries of all central government employees on Thursday. They also put this review in motion to check the allowances of all pensioners.
This verdict to establish the 8th Pay Commission was discussed during the meeting being held by the Union Cabinet. This meeting was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, these remarks were made by Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
The Union Minister further added that a chairman and two other members of the Commission will be appointed shortly. Not only this, but he said that consultations regarding this matter will also be held with the central and state governments as well as other stakeholders.
The central government takes the initiative to set up such a pay commission once every decade. This is done to look at and revise the structure of the employees salaries. Apart from this, each pay commission has a Term of Reference (ToR), which defines the purpose of the Commission. These pay commissions also make the decision regarding the pension payments. Currently, there are over 49 lakh employees that work under the central government and around 65 lakh petitioners, all of who come under this Commission.
The 7th Pay Commision was established in 2016 and its term will be ending in the year 2026 and according to this commission, all the central government employees are people from the civil services who work under the government. These employees receive their salaries from the consolidated funds of India which also holds the accounts of the government’s collected revenue.
The employees who come under the public sector undertaking (PSU), other autonomous bodies and the gramin dak sevaks do not come under the sphere of the 7th Pay Commission. The public sector employees have different pay scales based on the undertaking that they come under.
However, with the 8th Pay Commission being sanctioned, the authorities made certain changes in the 7th Pay Commission as well. Firstly, when the employee unions demanded a 3.68 fitment factor for the revisions in the salaries of the commission, the government heard their plea but decided to settle on a fitment factor of 2.57. These fitment factors are multipliers that are used for calculating the total sum of all salaries and pensions.
This change led to the minimum basic payment to become around ₹18,000 per month as compared to the ₹7,000 that was prevalent in the 6th Pay Commission. Not only this, but the minimum pension also grew from ₹3,500 to ₹9,000.