The Union Cabinet on Thursday hiked dearness allowance and dearness relief by 3% to 31% to benefit 47.14 lakh Central Government employees and 68.62 lakh pensioners.
This was informed by Minister of Information & Broadcasting Anurag Singh Thakur.
This decision to hike the allowance will put an annual burden of ₹9,488 crore on the exchequer.
Earlier in July, the government had restored the dearness allowance (DA) and dearness relief (DR) and increased the rate of allowance from 17% to 28%.
In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Union Government had frozen the three additional instalments of the DA and DR, which were due from January 1, 2020, July 1, 2020, and January 1, 2021.
