A committee headed by Cabinet Secretary BK Chaturvedi has turned down the request for constituting the Sixth Pay Commission to review the salaries and perks of all central government employees.
Senior officials told Business Standard the government was of the opinion that the Centre might not be able to bear the additional burden and the states were just recovering from the impact of the Fifth Pay Commission, whose recommendations were implemented in 1997.
The request was turned down by the committee a fortnight ago at a meeting with representatives of the Joint Consultative Mechanism, which is a group of 60-odd workmen employed with various ministries.
Apart from the cabinet secretary, the committee has the expenditure secretary and the personnel secretary as permanent members, while the largest number of JCM representatives are railway workmen.
The JCM intends to approach Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram to press its demands. The JCM meets the committee four times a year.
The Left parties, key allies of the United Progressive Alliance government, have in the past supported the demand for the constitution of the Sixth Pay Commission. There have also been demands to reduce the retirement age from 60 years to 58, as was the case before the implementation of the Fifth pay Commission.
In fact, one of the four recommendations of the last pay commission that has not been implemented so far, relates to the constitution of the Sixth Pay Commission.
Some states were also not keen on revision of salaries as they had to bear the additional burden, the officials said.
In fact, in their presentation to the Twelfth Finance Commission, states like West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya and Mizoram had sought a mechanism under which the Centre could not announce a pay revision without consulting states.
While seeking the Centre's help in offsetting the impact of the Fifth Pay Commission, a national wage policy had also been proposed by these states.
The Centre's wage bill for the year is estimated at Rs 38,650 crore (Rs 386.5 billion), as against Rs 36,700 crore (Rs 367 billion) in 2004-05. The civilian workforce is estimated to increase marginally to 3.46 million at the end of March 2006, compared to 3.42 million at end of March this year.
According to estimates, as a result of the Fifth Pay Commission recommendations, the share of government expenditure on general services in the total expenditure rose from 6.8 per cent in 1996-97 to 9.4 per cent in 1999-2000 and then fell to 7.3 per cent in 2003-04.