DA Hike latest updates; The Central Government has announced to increase Dearness Allowance (DA) for January-June 2026, but this time an interesting thing has come to light. While the DA of employees covered under 7th Pay Commission has been increased by only 2% from 58% to 60%, the employees under the old pay structure i.e. 6th Pay Commission and 5th Pay Commission have got a much higher increase.
is hidden in. Actually, not all government institutions implement the new pay commission simultaneously. Many autonomous institutions, universities, research institutions and grant-in-aid institutions take time to adapt to the new salary structure. In such a situation, the employees working there continue to take salary under the old pay commission.
Apart from this, there are many complications related to pensioners. Especially for those employees who retired before 2006 or 2016, some cases related to their pension are still pending or going on in the court. For this reason, they are still being paid under the old salary structure. At the same time, contract and temporary employees also often do not get the full benefit of the new pay commission, due to which they also remain stuck in the old system.
If we talk about figures, about 50 lakh central employees and about 67 lakh pensioners come under the 7th Pay Commission. But, a small part still remains in the old structure, who have got the benefit of higher percentage this time.
What will happen next?
Even though the 7th Pay Commission period has ended in 2025, its framework will continue until the 8th Pay Commission is implemented. After the implementation of the new recommendations, the existing DA will be merged with the basic salary and then DA will start from zero.
This time’s DA hike may seem small for the 7th Pay Commission employees, but if we look at the whole picture, its impact is different for different employees. This is the reason why India’s salary system still remains a mixture of old and new structures.