Government to restore three pending dearness allowance installments from July

Dearness allowance (DA) 2021: All central government employees and pensioners to get full benefits of dearness allowance from July 1, and all three pending installments will be restored prospectively, Minister for State (MoS) for Finance Anurag Thakur said in a reply in the Rajya Sabha.

In a major relief to central government employees and pensioners, the Centre is set to restore the three pending installments of Dearness Allowance (DA) and Dearness Relief (DR) from July 1, 2021.

The DA is mostly revised twice a year – in January and in July. The three installments of DA for the employees and DR for pensioners due on January 1, 2020, July 1, 2020, and January 1, 2021, were frozen by the government in view of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Minister of State (MoS) for Finance Anurag Thakur in a written reply to Rajya Sabha on Tuesday said, “As and when the decision to release the future installments of Dearness Allowance due from 01.07.2021 is taken, the rates of DA as effective from 01.01.2020, 01.07.2020 and 01.01.2021 will be restored prospectively and will be subsumed in the cumulative revised rates effective from 01.07.2021.”

The government’s decision to restore DA and DR from July is going to benefit around 50 lakh central government employees and over 60 lakh pensioners.

Thakur also informed that the freezing of DA and DR has helped the government save Rs 37,530.08 crore. This amount will help the government to tide over the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the minister said in his reply.

Currently, central government employees get DA of 17 per cent on their basic salary. Last year, the Cabinet had approved a 4 per cent hike in DA for central employees, which was suppose to be effective from January 1, 2021. However, in April 2020, the increment was stalled due to the pandemic.

Source: Read Full Article