What is the story about?
8th Pay Commission Latest Update: When the Central Pay Commission revises salaries and pensions, central government employees are the first to benefit.
State government employees usually follow, but not always immediately, and not always in exactly the same way. As discussions around the 8th Pay Commission (8th CPC) gather pace, questions are being raised about how and when state governments will implement pay revisions, and whether the benefits will match those given to central government employees.
Why states form their own pay commissions
State governments are not legally bound to implement the Centre’s pay commission recommendations verbatim. Instead, many states constitute their own State Pay Commissions to revise salaries, pensions and allowances based on their financial capacity and fiscal priorities.
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“Despite there being different pay commissions running in different states, the pay structure in states and Centre is nearly the same,” Manjeet Singh Patel, National President of the All India NPS Employees Federation told the Economic Times.
Some states align closely with the Centre, while others follow their own timelines. For instance, Kerala is currently under its 11th Pay Commission, Karnataka its 7th, and Punjab its 6th, highlighting that states do not necessarily follow a uniform 10-year revision cycle.
How state pay commissions function
The working of a state pay commission broadly mirrors that of the Central Pay Commission. A retired government officer, who is the secretary of a prominent central government employee and pensioner body and spoke on condition of anonymity, told ET Wealth Online, “A chairman and committee members are appointed, the pay commission prepares and submits its report, a group of ministers goes through it and provides suggestions, and the state government implements it.”
Are salary hikes the same as the Centre’s?
In many cases, states adopt similar fitment factors to those recommended by the Centre, though slight variations are common. For example, while the 7th Central Pay Commission used a fitment factor of 2.57, Punjab’s 6th Pay Commission adopted 2.59, and Uttar Pradesh matched the Centre at 2.57.
Timeline for implementation
According to Ramachandran Krishnamoorthy, Director, Payroll Services, Nexdigm, there is no statutory deadline for states to implement the 8th CPC after the Centre does.
“Typically, early adopting states implement the revisions within six months to one year, often by broadly aligning with the Centre’s pay structure. Most states, however, take one to three years, as they constitute their own state pay commissions to assess the fiscal impact and recommend suitable modifications,” Krishnamoorthy said.
Looking back at the 7th CPC, he noted that several states implemented the revised pay scales within a year of 2016, while others took until 2020 or later, following a staggered pattern seen in earlier pay commission cycles.
