In its first Cabinet meeting after BJP’s electoral victories in the recently-concluded Assembly polls, the Narendra Modi dispensation on Wednesday brought cheers for Central Government employees. It increased the Dearness Allowance and Dearness Relief to 4 per cent from the existing 2 per cent from January 1, 2017 benefiting 48.85 lakh employees and 55.51 lakh pensioners and approved the sanction of `1,160 crore for setting up 50 new Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs) for the children of civil and Defence personnel.
The DA and DR will be effective from January 1, 2017. The hike is as per the agreed methodology of taking the average of the Consumer Price Index-Industrial Workers (CPI-IW) for the past 12 months.
“New KVs will be opened from classes I to V for which 650 regular posts shall be created in all 50 KVs. The school grows every year with addition of one higher class and, when the school grows up to class XII and becomes a full-fledged school with two sections in each class, there shall be a requirement of about 4,000 regular posts of various categories i.e., about 2,900 teaching posts and about 1,100 non-teaching posts. These new schools when fully functional will provide quality education to approximately 50,000 students in addition to the approximately 12 lakh students already studying in the present KVs,” said an official statement.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the development of the six laning of the 73-km Handia-Varanasi section of NH-2 in Uttar Pradesh.
This work will be under the National Highways Development Project Phase-V. The approval is in Hybrid Annuity Mode with the cost estimated to be `2,147 crore, including cost of land acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation and other pre-construction activities.
This apart, 15 Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), set up under the PPP mode,
were granted power to award degrees in the academic courses conducted by them with the Cabinet approving The Indian Institute of Information Technology Public Private Partnership (IIIT-PPP) Bill, 2017 declaring them as Institutions of National Importance. The cost of each IIIT is Rs 128 crore and is contributed by the Centre, State Government and the industry in the ratio of 50:35:15.
The Cabinet also approved a revised MoU between India and Bangladesh for establishing border haats. According to the official statement, border haats aim at promoting the well-being of the people dwelling in remote areas across the borders of two countries by promoting the traditional system of marketing the local produce through local markets. Currently, four border haats are operational, two each in Meghalaya and Tripura.
Meanwhile, the Confederation of Central Government Employees termed the hike as meager in view of the actual rise in cost of living index saying the CPI-IW was far from reality. The union also said that there was a lot of variation in the rates of price rise of commodities by Ministry of Agriculture and CPI-IW.