Dehradun, November 1: While central government employees are waiting for a hike in minimum pay and fitment factor beyond the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission or 7th CPC, state government employees of Uttarakhand received a good news on the eve of Dilwai. The Uttarakhand government on Thursday announced a pre-Diwali bonus for all the non-gazetted employees of the state.

More than 1.5 lakh state government employees working in local bodies, technical and aided educational institutes will get pre-Diwali bonus of Rs 6,908. The state finance secretary Amit Negi issued an order in this regard, which says the employees will get a 30-day ad hoc bonus for fiscal 2017-18. Earlier this week, the Assam government hiked the salary of master roll employees from existing Rs 6,000 to Rs 18,000 under the regular pay scale band.

Similarly, in a major 7th Pay Commission Diwali bonanza, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has approved a hike of 2 per cent on dearness allowance and dearness relief. With the latest increase, the dearness allowance has went up to 9 per cent. Months earlier, the Haryana government had also announced a similar hike of 2 per cent in DA granted to the state employees.

While state governments are hiking salary of allowances beyond the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission, the central government employees are yet to receive any such relief.

The 7th Pay Commission had proposed to hike minimum pay from Rs 7,000 to Rs 18,000 per month with fitment factor 2.57 for lower-level central government employees. The recommendation was approved by the Cabinet and came into force from January 1, 2016. Since then, the employees have been demanding to raise minimum pay to Rs 26,000 with fitment factor 3.68.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 01, 2018 05:23 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).