Govt has no plans for inflation-linked DA to pensioners

Government has no plans as yet to provide inflation-linked DA allowance to pensioners under EPS, Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said in Parliament on Monday."There is no proposal under consideration at present for providing inflation-linked Dearness Allowance (DA) to pensioners of EPS, 1995," Dattatreya said in a reply in the Lok Sabha.He said the issue of index-linking of pension by fully neutralising inflation was considered by the Expert Committee constituted by the government in 2009 for review of EPS and the same was found not feasible in the case of a funded scheme like EPS.In EPS, the contribution of the employer and government is at a fixed rate of 8.33 percent and 1.16 percent respectively."Therefore, the value of benefits cannot be left open-ended by linking it with inflation which is variable," the minister said.The minimum pension for pensioners under Employees' Pension Scheme