4% Dearness Allowance hike for Bihar employees, pensioners

The Bihar Cabinet today increased the dearness allowance (DA) of state government employees, pensioners and family pensioners by four per cent.

They would now get a total DA of 136 per cent instead of the existing 132 per cent, cabinet secretariat department Principal Secretary Brajesh Mehrotra said.

The DA would be given to the employees with effect from January 1 this year, Mehrotra told reporters here in a post cabinet briefing.

This would be applicable to those employees and pensioners who are getting revised pay scale according to the Sixth Pay Commission's recommendations, the Principal Secretary said.

The revision of DA would have an additional burden of Rs 561.30 crore on the state exchequer annually, he said.

For a minuscule number of employees, pensioners and family pensioners who are getting salary or pension as per Fifth Pay Commission's recommendations, the cabinet increased their DA by 11 per cent, he said.

The Cabinet also enhanced the corpus of Bihar Contingency Fund from Rs 350 crore to Rs 6403.42 crore for the period ending March 2018, Mehrotra said.

The decision to enhance the contingency fund has been taken in anticipation of giving relief to people affected by natural calamities and meeting other unexpected expenditure, he said.