7th Pay Commission: Big change in pension rule for govt employees, here's how much money pensioners will receive

7th Pay Commission latest update: In what comes as good news for government employees, changes have been made in the pension rules that will enable the family or dependents of the employee to get pension after his/her death.

Under the new rule, after the death of a central employee, his family and his dependents will get 50 percent of the salary as pension money in case of the employee's death before completion of 7 years in service.

According to the new rule, the government has done away with the condition of mandatory 7 years of service to avail pension for the dependents of the government employee. Now if an employee dies before the completion of 7 years of service, then 50 percent of the pension money will be given to the family. Earlier in several cases, the family members could not get the benefit of pension due to this condition.

After a long wait, the Central Government has increased the Dearness Allowance (DA) of employees. The government has reinstated DA and Dearness Relief (DR) for its employees and pensioners, hiking it to 28 percent from the existing rate of 17 percent. These new rates will be applicable from July 1, 2021.

The Finance Ministry had in April 2020 decided to stop the increase in dearness allowance for 50 lakh central government employees and 61 lakh pensioners till July 2021 due to the coronavirus crisis. They have not received the benefit of DA till June 30, 2021. Now about 48 lakh central employees and 65 lakh pensioners will benefit from this move of the government. This will increase the expenditure of the government by about Rs 34,401 crore.