The implementation of the Pay Commission recommendations will cost the State exchequer about ₹10,000 crore annually

The West Bengal Government will accept the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission and is likely to implement it from January 1, 2020, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on September 13.

She claimed that the erstwhile Left Front Government was responsible for the delay in the implementation of the pay panel’s recommendation as huge money is being spent to service the debt taken by it.

The implementation of the Pay Commission recommendations will cost the State exchequer about ₹10,000 crore annually.

The Sixth Pay Commission was formed on November 27, 2015, months before the 2016 Assembly election, to restructure the salaries of the State Government employees.

The panel, which was headed by Professor Abhirup Sarkar, was scheduled to submit its report within six months. However, it got periodic extensions and the latest one for another six months came on May 28.

Speaking on the delay in the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations, Ms. Banerjee said she had received the report only on September 13.

“I have received the Pay Commission report. We will accept the recommendations of the Commission and sympathetically consider it,” she said at the organisational meeting of the Trinamool Congress’ West Bengal State Government Employees Federation.

The central government has already approved the Seventh Central Pay Commission.

The Pay Commission recommendations include increase in the basic pay scale of state employees and increase of gratuity from ₹6 lakh to ₹10 lakh.

“The State Government employees are demanding to make up the shortfall of dearness allowance. But it should be kept in mind that only the West Bengal government has a guaranteed pension scheme. The pension scheme of the central government is not guaranteed,” Ms. Banerjee said.

“Few people during Lok Sabha elections have misguided you but all of you (State Government employees) can trust me. I won’t disappoint you,” she added.

Lashing out at the Left Trade Unions and State Government Employees’ Union, Ms. Banerjee said the erstwhile Left Front dispensation had implemented the Fifth Pay Commission two years after it was submitted in 2006. “The Left Front had taken huge debt and we are paying ₹55,000 crore every year for it. It is due to its fiscal mismanagement that we are facing so much problems,” she said.