Composition of 7th Central Pay Commission under the Charmanship of Justice Ashok Kumar Mathur Approved

The Finance Minister Shri P. Chidambaram has issued the following statement:

“The Prime Minister has approved the composition of the 7th Central Pay Commission as follows:

The Centre on Tuesday picked a retired supreme court judge and retired chairman of the Armed Forces Tribunal, Ashok Kumar Mathur, to head the seventh Pay Commission, which will  recommend on revising salaries and pension of five million government employees and three million retired ones with effect from January 1, 2016.

While the Commission is not expected to come out with an interim relief as the general elections are just two-to-three months away, the government may increase and merge dearness allowance (DA) with the basic pay.

Petroleum secretary Vivek Rae and National Institute of Public Finance and Policy director Rathin Roy are members of the Commission. While Rae was appointed a full-time member, Roy is a part-time one.

Meena Agarwal, an officer on special duty in the expenditure department of the finance ministry, will serve as secretary. The Commission has been mandated to give its report in two years.

When asked whether the Commission will come out with an interim award, an official said it was not likely.

The government might announce a 10 per cent increase in DA next month to make it 100 per cent of basic pay. The government is also considering employees’ demand to merge DA with the basic pay, said the official quoted above. Another official said the exact terms of reference were yet to be finalised and approved.

The government constitutes a Pay Commission almost every 10 years to revise the pay of its employees and often, these are adopted by states after some modification. The sixth Pay Commission was implemented with effect from January 1, 2006, the fifth from January 1, 1996 and the fourth from January 1, 1986.

The seventh Commission, which was announced in September 2013, comes about three years before its recommendations will actually take effect. This could be aimed at reverting to the usual practice, snapped when the sixth pay panel was set up. The Cabinet had approved setting up of the sixth pay commission in July 2006, and its recommendations came into effect retrospectively from January 2006. That was because the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government, which was in power then, had initially refused to set up the Commission.

Mr. Justice Ashok Kumar Mathur, M.A.,L.L.B – was born on August 7, 1943 . He was enrolled as an Advocate of the Rajasthan High Court on October 20, 1967 . He was appointed as Assistant Government Advocate and Deputy Government Advocate on August 2, 1969 and Government Advocate of Jodhpur from January 31, 1977 to July 12, 1978 . Appointed as Additional Advocate General in 1981. He was appointed as Additional Judge on July 13, 1985 and permanent Judge of the Rajasthan High Court on July 23, 1986 . He was transferred to the Madhya Pradesh High Court on February 18, 1994 .

New Delhi: Justice Ashok Kumar Mathur, a retired judge of the Supreme Court on Tuesday took over as first Chairperson of the Armed Forces Tribunal in India for a period of four years.

Mathur, enrolled as an advocate of the Rajasthan High Court in 1967, served as Assistant Government Advocate and Deputy Government Advocate and later as Government Advocate of Jodhpur from 1969 to 1978.

He was appointed as Additional Advocate General of Rajasthan in 1981. Justice Mathur became Additional Judge of Rajasthan High Court in 1985 and Permanent Judge of the same court in 1986.

Mathur was transferred to the Madhya Pradesh High Court in 1994 and was appointed as Chief Justice of the same court in 1996. He was transferred to Calcutta High Court in 1999.

Later, he was elevated as Judge of the Supreme Court of India on June 7, 2004.

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Mr. Vivek Rae entered the Indian Administrative Service in 1978, a brief stint as a Management Trainee with Hindustan Lever Limited (subsidiary of Unilever Limited). As a civil servant, Mr. Rae has acquired wide ranging experience cutting across social and economic sectors, including health, education, planning and finance. Mr. Rae served as Deputy Commissioner in the state of Arunachal Pradesh from 1985 to 1988 which is the cutting edge of government administration for delivery of development programmes at the field level, combined with magisterial responsibilities for law and order. Mr. Rae served briefly at the Prime Minister’s Office during 1989-90 and thereafter worked as Assistant Resident Representative with the United National Development Programme, New Delhi from 1991-1995, with responsibility for Industry, Trade and Technology programmes. Mr. Rae worked as Finance Secretary and Planning Secretary in the state of Goa during 1996-1999, Planning Secretary in the National Capital Territory of Delhi during 1999-2001 and Joint Secretary (Plan Finance) in the Ministry of Finance, Government of India during 2002-2006. The assignment in the Ministry of Finance entailed responsibilities for appraisal and review of major development programmes and investment decisions of the Government of India. 

As Chief Secretary of Andaman & Nicobar Islands (2008-2010), the highest ranking civil servant leading an administration of more than 20000 employees, Mr. Rae was charged with responsibilities for overall coordination, policy formulation and implementation of programmes across the entire spectrum of development activities including health, education industries, labour, agriculture & animal husbandry, fisheries, forests, tribal welfare, social welfare, tourism, shipping, ports, public works and other activities. The responsibilities also included direct oversight for matters relating to internal security, coastal security and police administration. 

Earlier, Mr. Rae served as Director General (Acquisition) in the Ministry of Defense of the Government of India, during 2010-12 with responsibilities for modernization of the Indian Armed Forces, handling a budget of about US$ 10-13 billion per annum. Mr. Rae was posted briefly as Secretary, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Government of India, prior to taking up the current assignment. 

Rathin Roy took charge as Director NIPFP in May 2013. Prior to joining NIPFP, he has been the Director of Asia Pacific Regional Centre, UNDP, Bangkok, and the Director, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG), UNDP, Brazil. He has also served as the Public Resource Management Advisor, and the Acting Cluster Leader, Inclusive Development, in the Poverty Practice, Bureau for Development Policy (BDP), UNDP. On invitation from the Government of India, he also served as the Economic Advisor to the Thirteenth Finance Commission, a Constitutional body of the Government of India. He has worked in over 80 countries during and prior to his tenure with UNDP, and is a well known figure in the world of applied macroeconomic and fiscal policy.

He holds a PhD in Economics and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, UK. Post-PhD, he was tenured in the Economics Faculty at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and an Economist with the Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester. [Source: http://www.nipfp.org.in/staff/26/faculty/]

Ministry of Finance 

Available web information:-  “The Central deputation tenure of Meena Agarwal, a joint secretary in the department of expenditure in finance ministry, has been extended for three months till June 6, 2012. Mrs Agarwal is a 1981 batch IRAS officer and wife of OP Agarwal, a 1979 batch ex-IAS, now in a senior position at World Bank.” [Source: http://archive.is/1Ebg]