Ajay Maken backs cry for seventh pay panel

TNN | Mar 17, 2013, 04.08 AM IST
NEW DELHI: With a little over a year to go before the next general election, the demand for a Seventh Pay Commission has started to gather momentum. Union housing and urban poverty alleviation minister Ajay Maken has taken the lead in endorsing the Central government employees' request for setting up of the new pay panel, citing the erosion of real wages due to high inflation since implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission's recommendations.

In a letter addressed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Maken underlined how every pay panel since the Second Pay Commission, barring the Sixth Pay Commission, were set up in the third year of the decade. "We are again in the third year of the ongoing decade and Central government employees are justifiably looking forward to the Seventh Pay Commission," he said.

Recalling that it was under Singh that the last pay panel was set up in 2005, after the NDA government failed to do so in 2003, Maken, in the communication dated March 14, requested that a decision be "taken on priority" for constitution of the Seventh Central Pay Commission. "A notification for constitution of the 7th Central Pay Commission is the need of the bour, which is bound to have bearing upon about 20 million employees," he said.

Maken concluded by emphasizing that setting up of the new pay panel was in "larger interest of government employees as well as the (Congress) party".