Pay Commissions of India

The Government of India constitutes, as a matter of convention, a pay commission after almost every 10 years to review and make recommendations on the wage structure of Central Government civilian and armed forces employees and pensioners. A pay commission, depending on the terms of reference, examines various aspects -- such as pay and allowances, retirement and death benefits, conditions of service, promotion policy and such other related matters -- of the wage structure of employees and submits its recommendations to the Government. The Government, in turn, takes the final decision as to the implementation of the recommendations, which may be full or partial or amended or modified. The chairman and members of the pay commission are nominated by the Government. A pay commission is not a constitutional body and therefore the Central Government has a lot of leeway about which part of the report to adopt and in what timeframe. Since India's Independence, 7 pay commissions have been set up, from time to time, to review and recommend wage structure for Central Government employees. Usually a pay commission is given 18 month's time to submit its report. A pay commission, before recommending the pay structure, analyses voluminous data relating, inter alia, to the general economic conditions in the country, financial resources of the government, strength of the work force, and pay structure in public sector and private sector undertakings. Clearly, review and determination of the pay structure of Central Government employees and pensioners is a stupendous and complicated task. Reports of pay commissions provide glimpses of the events, challenges and perceptions of labour leaders and policy makers during the post-Independence period. The present work provides highlights and summary of recommendations of each of the 7 pay commissions which have reported so far. The work is divided into two parts. Part I deals with the Reports of First to Sixth Pay Commission. Part II is exclusively devoted to the Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission which was submitted to the Government on 19 November 2015.