The West Bengal Finance Department has issued a notification announcing an increase in Dearness Allowance (DA) for state government employees to 38 per cent, with effect from October 1 this year.
State Finance Minister Swapan Dasgupta, while presenting his budget proposals for the financial year 2026-27 on the floor of the West Bengal Assembly on June 22, had announced that the DA of state government employees and the dearness relief for pensioners would be raised by 20 percentage points from October 1.
As per the notification, besides the permanent state government employees, the enhanced DA will be paid to the teaching and non-teaching staff in state-run and state-aided schools as well as the employees in statutory bodies, government undertakings, panchayats, municipal corporations, municipalities and other local bodies.
At the same time, an enhanced dearness relief will be paid to the pensioners and family pensioners of the state. They will get dearness relief at the rate of 38 per cent of the revised basic pension or revised family pension. The guidelines stated that the pension paying authority will correctly calculate the amount of dearness relief payable on the revised pension or family pension in each individual case.
For employees who are still in the pre-revised or unrevised pay structure as recommended by the Fifth Pay Commission, the rate of dearness allowance has also been increased in one step from 171 per cent to 223 per cent, effective from October 1.
Similarly, as per the notification, the dearness relief has been increased from 171 per cent to 223 per cent for those who are still getting pre-revised pension or family pension as per ROPA (Revision of Pay and Allowance), 2009.
In addition, the daily wage of all government daily wage workers or daily rated workers whose wages are not regulated by any statutory provision like the Minimum Wages Act has been increased by an ad-hoc increase of Rs 110.
The state Finance department’s guidelines clearly state that in the case of government undertakings or statutory bodies, all the expenses of this additional dearness allowance and dearness relief will have to be borne from their own funds or from the financial assistance received in the budget.
-IANS
