Lakhs of employees and pensioners of autonomous bodies working under the Central government may be in for some bad news, with the revision of their salary and pension scales expected to be delayed.
They are yet to receive the full benefits of the pay scale recommended by the 7th Central Pay Commission (CPC), and the Confederation of Central Government Employees and Workers (CCGEW) has already taken up the matter with the Centre.
Now, the Ministry of Finance has ordered implementation of the recommendations of the Expenditure Management Commission (EMC) on autonomous bodies. Now, since the recommendations include evaluating whether an autonomous body needs to continue working with the government, or whether it can be merged with another autonomous body or closed altogether, the implementation of pay scales for these employees and pensioners as per the 7th CPC recommendations is expected to be delayed further.
The delay in this implementation is resulting in quite a bit of financial hardships for employees and pensioners of autonomous bodies. CCGEW president KKN Kutty had told International Business Times, India, in October: "We have taken up this issue with the Central government, and given the delay, we will take it up with them again. Otherwise, a lot of people will lose out on the benefits, where the person at the lowest rank will be deprived of as much as Rs 2,750 per month."
It may be noted that the General Financial Rules of the Central government also call for periodical reviews of autonomous bodies. If both the Rules and the EMC recommendations are implemented, it may lead to some reorganisation among the autonomous bodies, and even the closure of a few. Since this is subject to time, there may be some more delay in the implementation of the 7th CPC pay scale recommendations for autonomous bodies.
