Justice Mathur to head 7th Pay Commission

The Commission has been mandated to submit its report in two years’ time and its recommendations would be implemented from January 1, 2016.

In a move that will benefit over 80 lakh government employees and pensioners, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday approved the composition of the Seventh Pay Commission with former Supreme Court judge Ashok Kumar Mathur as its chairman.

“The Prime Minister has approved the composition of the Seventh Central Pay Commission,” said a finance ministry statement. Although the finance ministry had announced setting up of the seventh pay panel in September last year, its composition has been approved just before the model code of conduct for the General Elections comes into force.

Apart from Mathur, who is also a retired chairman of the Armed Forces Tribunal, petroleum secretary Vivek Rae has been appointed as the full-time member of the panel Rathin Roy, director, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy will be part-time Member and Meena Agarwal, officer-on-special duty in the department of expenditure will be its secretary.

The Commission has been mandated to submit its report in two years’ time and its recommendations would be implemented from January 1, 2016.
The recommendations of the pay panel will benefit about 50 lakh Central government employees, including those in defence and railways, and about 30 lakh pensioners, and also has a ripple effect with state government setting up similar commissions for their own employees. The government constitutes a Pay Commission almost every 10 years to revise the pay scales of its employees and often these are adopted by states after some modifications.