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Seventh Pay Commission: President Salary To Bar Bureaucrats From Pay Hikes

New Delhi: The Seventh pay commission is likely to recommend fixing the highest basic salary at Rs 180,000, while the current salary of the President is Rs 150,000 per month, which will come as a bar for top bureaucrats pay hikes in the Seventh Pay Commission.

The current salary of the President Pranab Mukherjee is Rs 150,000 per month.

This is because bureaucrats can surely not cross the presidential salary since government officers serve on presidential pleasure; their salary cannot exceed that of the occupant of Rashtrapati Bhawan.

Accordingly, the presidential salary could be a bar for their pay hikes in the Seventh Pay Commission.

In this circumstance, the cabinet secretary, India’s highest-paid officer, can’t get salary of Rs 180,000.

A totally new regime of perks and allowances is, however, not ruled out. Speculation has run wild on the Seventh Pay Commission recommending a big pay hike for officers and employees, considering inflation.

“The Seventh Pay Commission is going to propose raising the basic salary to Rs 20,000 from existing Rs 6660 for the lowest grade and Rs 180,000 from Rs 80,000 for the highest as the pay panel is considering pay ratio of the pay of the bottom paid employees to the pay of the highest paid officials to come down to 1:9 from 1:12,” highly-placed sources in the pay panel said.

A pay panel source admitted the President’s salary revision is required to fix the salary of top bureaucrats under Seventh Pay Commission as it’s “benchmark” for the salaries of government officials.

The government is need to put the salaries hike bill in Parliament to approve two-fold increase in the monthly salary of the President, and state Governors before the implementation the recommendation of the Seventh Pay Commission, the official added.

The recommendations of pay commissions often are adopted by state governments, so the salaries of bureaucrats of state governments cannot exceed that of the Governor, since state government officers serve on Governor’s pleasure, he clarified.

The Seventh Pay Commission, headed by Justice A K Mathur, was appointed by the previous UPA government in February 2014 for 18 months. Its terms was extended in August 2015 by four months till December 31, 2015.

The government constitutes the pay commission almost every 10 years to revise the pay scale of central government employees and often these are adopted by states after some modifications.

The recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission are scheduled to take effect from 1 January 2016. The Sixth Pay Commission was implemented with effect from 1 January 2006, the fifth from 1 January 1996 and the fourth from 1 January 1986.

As part of the exercise, the commission holds discussions with various stakeholders, including organisations, federations, groups representing civil employees as well as Defence services.

TST