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| Diwali gift for farmers |
| Shashikant Trivedi / New Delhi/ Bhopal Oct 16, 2009, 00:45 IST |
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Ahead of Diwali, the Madhya Pradesh state government has come up with a largesse for the 500,000-odd employees and farmers in the state.
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan today announced another installment of 6 per cent dearness allowance to its employees. The first installment of the allowance will be effective from November but paid in December while the other installment will be paid in February.
“This decision is in-principle and a proper order will come soon. However, pensioners are not covered in it,” a government spokesperson told Business Standard. The new announcement will put an additional financial strain of Rs 600 crore per annum on the state kitty.
Various employees’ associations have demanded 11 per cent dearness allowance as the government had promised to pay them wages at par with that of Central government employees.
The cash-starved, debt ridden state has to bear an annual burden of Rs 100 crore if it pays only 1 per cent DA to its employees. With this announcement the gap between state employees and central government employees in terms of dearness allowance is only 5 per cent.
The state employees will now get 22 per cent DA.
Further, the paddy growers will get additional Rs 50 per quintal as bonus from the existing Rs 950 per quintal minimum support price. Grade-A paddy growers will get a similar bonus.
Thus the MSP of paddy in Madhya Pradesh will be Rs 1,000 per quintal and Rs 1,080 per quintal for grade-A paddy.
The state has suffered production loss of paddy due to scanty rainfall this year. The expected 17 lakh tonne is likely to go down to 12 lakh tonne.
The state government has already announced bonus of Rs 100 per quintal on wheat for Rabi 2009-10.
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