7th Pay Commission: Government employees will have to wait for the increase in dearness allowance, know when and how much money they will get | News India

If you are a central government employee or there is a central government employee in your family, then this news is for you. Earlier it was expected that the announcement of the increase in dearness allowance on central employees from July 1 would be made in the first week of September. But some media reports are claiming that the increase in DA may happen around the elections.

Sources claim that the government may announce a DA hike as the Haryana assembly elections approach. The government hopes that it may benefit from increasing the DA at that time. Voting for the assembly elections will be held in Haryana on October 5.

If we look at the history of DA hike in the last few years, every year DA hike was announced a week or 15 days before Diwali. But this time it may happen early due to elections. The central government may announce DA hike for employees and pensioners in the last week of September. This time retired employees and pensioners may see an increase of up to 4 percent in DA and DR. If the assembly elections were not held in early October, the DA would probably have been announced in October. Let us tell you here that DA hike is announced twice every year by the government.

Usually DA is announced around Diwali
Usually, July's DA is announced around Diwali and January's DA is announced in March. If DA is announced by the end of September, employees and pensioners can expect the salary/pension hike to be implemented in October. This simply means that employees will also get arrears for three months i.e. from July to September. This time DA is expected to increase between 3 to 4 percent. Dearness allowance is given to employees and pensioners working in the respective government departments for dearness relief. DA is calculated on the basis of AICPI index.

How DA is calculated
Earlier, the DA hike was calculated on the basis of Consumer Price Index with base year 2001. After this, the government changed the new Consumer Price Index for DA calculation from September 2020 with base year 2016. The CPI-IW increased from 138.8 to 141.4 from December 2023 to June 2024. It has increased by 2.6 points. As a result, the DA hike percentage is likely to increase from 50.28% to 53.36%.