New Delhi: The Seventh Pay Commission is likely to propose to increase House Rent Allowance (HRA) of central government employees, besides their basic salaries.

Seventh Central Pay Commission Chairman Justice Ashok Kumar Mathur

By giving House Rent Allowance hikes, the Pay Commission is likely to seek to encourage property owners to rent out their properties, reduce the shortage of dwellings and to provide ‘housing for all central government employees’.

Besides the basic salary, a large portion of central government employees’ salary is the House Rent Allowance; some changes will be made in that category this time.

Instead of the existing three areas for house rent, four are likely to be created. ‘X’ class cities Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune, where employees will get 40 percent of their basic salary as House Rent Allowance (HRA), increasing from the existing 30 percent.

Employees posted at ‘Y’ class cities covers near about 90 stations, will receive 30 percent of basic salary, instead of the existing 20 percent.

A new area will be opened for the district towns; the central government employees will get 20 percent of their basic salary as House Rent Allowance (HRA) there.

In other areas, the house rent allowance will be 10 percent of basic, which is the existing rate of House Rent Allowance (HRA) of ‘Z’ class cities.

The existing qualifying threshold of population for HRA classification is 50 lakh and above for X, 5-50 lakh for Y and below 5 lakh for Z class cities.

However, the central government’s salary bill will rise by 9.56% to Rs 1,00,619 crore with the implementation of the recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission, according to a statement tabled in Parliament by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on August 12.
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