Supreme Court Committee Urges West Bengal Government to Address Dearness Allowance Payments The Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee has directed the West Bengal government to expedite the disbursement of Dearness Allowance (DA) to approximately 64,759 government employees whose e-service records have been scanned and uploaded. The committee mandated that the first installment of DA for the period 2008-2015 must be paid by September 3, 2026, to ensure compliance with judicial directives. The directive follows a hearing on Thursday, where the committee presented its findings to the Supreme Court. The court had earlier instructed the committee to submit its report to all stakeholders, which it did. The committee emphasized that the government must prioritize resolving the DA claims for employees whose records are already updated. The financial implications of the DA payments are significant. The government is required to allocate a total of ₹11,983 crore to settle outstanding DA claims for employees from 2008 to 2019. This includes adjustments for employees whose service records were not fully updated, necessitating the digitization of their files. As of now, 64,759 employees have completed the scanning and uploading of their e-service records, while an additional 133,991 are in the process of updating their data. The committee highlighted that the government’s delayed action in updating records has caused delays in calculating accurate DA amounts. To address this, the committee urged the government to expedite the digitization process and ensure timely payment of the first installment by the stipulated deadline.#dearness_allowance #west_bengal_government #supreme_court #indu_malhotra #firuz_shami
