Dearness Allowance News: Manmohan Singh believed that it was not necessary to impose hardships on government employees.

Dearness Allowance Hike freeze for Central Government Employees Latest News: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday said he believed that it was “not necessary” to impose hardships on government employees and armed forces by freezing Dearness Allowance and Dearness Relief hike till July 2021. “I sincerely believe it is not necessary at this stage to impose hardships on government servants and also on the armed forces people,” news agency ANI quoted former PM Dr Manmohan Singh as saying on the Centre’s decision to freeze Dearness Allowance and Dearness Relief hike till July 2021.

The Central Government has decided to freeze DA, DR hike of employees and pensioners in view of the Coronavirus crisis that has taken a huge toll on the country’s finances.

The Dearness Allowance hike is made by the government as per the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission.

On Thursday, the finance ministry had frozen inflation-linked allowance for 50 lakh central government employees and 61 lakh pensioners till June 2021 due to the COVID-19 crisis. However, the employees and pensioners will continue to get DA and dearness relief (DR) at current rates. During the Congress’s consultative group meeting whose video was released by the party on Saturday, news agency PTI quoted Singh as saying, “We should be on the side of people whose dearness allowance is being cut. I sincerely believe it is not necessary at this stage to impose hardships on government servants and also on the armed forces people.”

Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi also slammed the government over the DA-DR issue. “You are taking away money from the middle class, you are not giving money to the poor people and you are spending it on your central vista,” Gandhi said in the meeting.

Former Union minister Manish Tewari said that the first thing the government should have done before cutting allowances, salaries, etc. was to set up an expenditure rationalisation commission. Congress general secretary, organization, KC Venugopal said there was a lot of anguish among the government employees over the dearness allowance issue as it would harm them very much.

(This report was first published on April 25, 2020)