Union Cabinet likely to approve 10% DA hike on Friday

The Union Cabinet is likely to approve hiking dearness allowance to 100 percent from existing 90 percent benefiting 50 lakh employees and 30 lakh pensioners in it meeting scheduled on Friday.

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“The Union Cabinet will take a proposal to hike dearness allowance (DA) for its employees and dearness relief for its pensioners to 100 percent this Friday as per agenda listed for the meeting,” a source said.

This increase in the dearness allowance by the UPA-II government comes ahead of the imposition of the model code of conduct by the Election Commission.

The model code of conduct is likely to come into force with the announcement of the schedule for the forthcoming general elections in a week or so.

Also, it would be the second double-digit DA hike in a row.

The government had announced a hike of 10 percent to 90 percent in September last year, effective from July 1, 2013.

The hike in DA would be effective from the January 1 this year.

As per practice, the government uses Consumer Price Index-Industrial Workers data of the past 12 months to arrive at a quantum for the purpose of any DA hike. Thus, the retail inflation for industrial workers between January 1 to December 31, 2013 would be used to take a final call on the matter.

According to the provisional data released by government on January 31, the retail inflation for factory workers for the month of December stood at 9.13 percent. The revised retail inflation data for January would be released on February 28.

An official said that the preliminary assessment suggests that DA hike will not be less than 10 per cent and would be effective from January 1 this year.