6% DA hike from July 2015 – Central Cabinet approved yesterday

6% DA hike from July 2015 – Central Cabinet approved yesterday

“The central cabinet has given its approval yesterday to a six percent hike in dearness allowance from July 2015 onwards, for Central Government employees and pensioners.”

Central Government employees and pensioners get two dearness allowance hikes each year. The dearness allowance for the period of months between January to June is given in March; the DA hike for July to December is given in September.

Accordingly, the second installment of Dearness Allowance, for the months of July to December, has been fixed at 6 percent. The cabinet gave its approval yesterday. The current DA of 113% will, from 01.07.2015 onwards, increase to 119%.

Following the hike, Central Government employees will get a minimum increment of Rs.420 per month. The increase is dependent on the basic pay(Band Pay + Grade Pay) of the employees. For example, let us consider an employee who has been working for 25 years, and receives a basic pay of Rs.16,000 per month. He will get a DA hike of Rs.960.

The current method of calculation of DA was prescribed by the 6th Pay Commission. The method, which has been in effect for nearly ten years now, will be used one last installment to calculate the DA of January (01.01.2016). The subsequent Dearness Allowance calculations will be made based on the method recommended by the 7th Pay Commission. The Commission is expected to submit its recommendations to the Centre by December this year. The recommended revised method of calculations for DA in the report will be follow to arrive DA from 1.1.2016.

Towards the end of this month, the Ministry of Finance will issue relevant orders to give out six percent DA payment to the Central Government employees and pensioners. Only then will the increased DA be given to the employees, along with the arrears of the past two months (July and August).

78 cities were selected from all over the country and the fluctuations in the prices of essential commodities in these cities are tracked. These fluctuations are used to calculate the monthly points (CPI-IW BY 2001 = 100), which are further used to arrive at the dearness allowance.