The Karnataka government on Saturday announced the increase of Dearness Allowance (DA) for its employees by 3.75 per cent. The increase in DA has been the long-standing demand of government employees in the state and the Congress party even promised a hike during the assembly election campaign.
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In an order, the government said it was revising the dearness allowance from the existing 35 per cent to 38.75 per cent. The government also announced the lecturers on UGC/AICTE/ICAR scale and the judicial officers will get a hike of four per cent in their DA. With the hike, the state government will spend an additional ₹1,109 crore.
In March this year, the erstwhile BJP government offered an interim hike in basic salary of up to 17%, after it received backlash from the employee unions. It also then announced setting up a committee to study the feasibility of reverting to the Old Pension Scheme (OPS).
Meanwhile on Saturday, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah directed higher education officials to fill Kalyana Karnataka and other backlog posts as priority.
The CM also sought a uniform calendar of events so that the activities of different universities are not held at different periods, causing inconvenience to candidates seeking admission.
The chief minister also reviewed the activities of the Kannada Study Chair at the Jawahar Nehru University (JNU), which was founded during his previous tenure, and passed on further instructions for taking its activities forward.
