Cabinet Okays 4% Hike In Da For Central Govt Staff

The Cabinet today approved a 4 per cent hike in dearness allowance and dearness relief for central government employees and pensioners, respectively. The revised rates of the allowance and the relief, which will be due from January 1 this year, now stand at 49 per cent of the basic salary.

The hike would put an additional burden of Rs 1,831 crore on the exchequer for the current year, while the annual impact of the increase would be Rs 1,569.6 crore, minister for parliamentary affairs Pramod Mahajan told reporters here. The impact on the current fiscal would be higher as the government would have to shell out allowance and relief for 14 months, Mahajan said.

The Cabinet could not take up the proposed amendments to the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act and the issues of liquidating burgeoning foodgrain stocks because finance minister Yashwant Sinha was occupied with the Lok Sabha proceedings, he said. The Cabinet also approved the relinquishment of the final 20 per cent pioneer area to the International Seabed Authority. India was allotted 1.5 lakh square km area for exploitation in the central Indian Ocean. As part of the United Nations Convention on the law of the Sea, India was registered as the pioneer investor for the area, and had exclusive rights to develop the mine sites.

The convention required the country to relinquish half of this seabed land in a phased manner. Thirty per cent of the area had earlier been relinquished.

Among other decisions, the Cabinet approved the revised cost of the Kurichu hydroelectric project in Bhutan at Rs 559.5 crore and the amendments to the Haj Act.