State govt employees to draw DA at 18% of basic pay from April 1

Kolkata: The Finance department notified on Tuesday that the whole time state government employees shall draw Dearness Allowance (DA) at the rate 18 per cent of basic pay with effect from April 1.

The calculation of DA shall be made taking into account the revised basic pay and NPA, if any, but it shall not include any other type of pay. “The state has so far released DA upto 14 per cent on the revised basic pay. In order to reduce the burden of inflation on the government and semi government employees, teaching and non teaching staffs and pensioners, the state government has decided to release another installment of DA of 4 per cent with effect from April 1, 2025 raising the total DA to 18 per cent,” said a Finance department official.

The DA sanctioned shall be admissible to the teaching and non-teaching employees of government aided educational institutions, employees of statutory bodies, government undertakings, Panchayats, including Panchayat karmee, municipal corporations / municipalities, local bodies etc. The hike was announced by state Finance minister Chandrima Bhattacharjee while presenting the state Budget for the year 2024-25 on February 12 in the Assembly. The state government pensioners/ family pensioners shall draw Dearness Relief (DR) @18 percent of revised basic pension/ revised family pension with effect from April 1.

“In the case of public undertakings/ statutory bodies, the additional expenditure for sanction of DA and DR should be borne by such undertakings/ bodies themselves out of their own resources or out of financial assistance provided to them in the budget and no additional financial assistance will be given to them on that account,” reads the notification.

There will be a further ad-hoc increase in the daily rate of wages by Rs. 22 with effect from April 1 for the daily rated workers under the government whose wages are not regulated by any statutory provisions like the Minimum Wages Act, etc.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court hearing on the West Bengal DA matter, which was scheduled for Tuesday, has been reportedly postponed to April. It was learnt that on the next date the state will have to answer why its plea shouldn’t be rejected. There was already a delay in the hearing of the matter earlier due to change of Bench. A section of state government employees had moved the apex court with the prayer that the state should bring its DA percentage at par with the Centre’s rate of DA.