8th Pay Commission- The tenure of the Seventh Pay Commission is slowly coming to an end. In such a situation, central employees and pensioners across the country are unaware of the progress of the 8th Pay Commission. Let us tell you that the central government had announced the formation of a new pay commission in January this year. It was believed that the Terms of Reference (ToR) would be finalized by April and after that the commission would start working on its agenda.
However, even after six months of announcing the formation of the 8th Pay Commission, the government has not been able to finalise the Terms of Reference. Amidst all this, every government employee is asking a big question that when will the 8th Pay Commission finally start working and submit its recommendations to the Centre? Based on the recommendations of the Commission, the government will revise the salaries and pensions of working and retired employees.
Growing uncertainty among employees and pensioners
There is a lot of confusion about the progress of the Eighth Pay Commission. There are also many rumors about it. On the one hand, some media reports are constantly running reports on estimates of salary hike, fitment factor and possible dates of its implementation. On the other hand, the ground reality is that the official process of the commission is still stalled.
More than six months have passed since the announcement, but neither the name of the chairman of the commission has been decided nor the TOR has been issued. Due to this, various pensioner organizations and employee unions have raised this issue on various forums and have written letters to the government. These employee representative bodies have demanded to expedite the process of formation of the commission.
Is the January 2026 deadline for the 8th Pay Commission now possible?
The commission’s process has been extremely slow since January. In April, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) invited applications for four Under Secretary-level posts under the commission, the last date for which was later extended twice to July 31, but there has been no official announcement yet regarding the appointment of the chairman or members of the commission.
The first and most important link in the process of the Pay Commission is the ToR, but there is no clarity on the ToR from the government yet. Employee organizations have expressed their concerns on this through various means and on many platforms. Until the ToR and appointments are made, the work of the commission cannot begin.
When will the recommendations of the 8th Pay Commission be implemented?
Now the question arises that when it has not even been constituted, then when will its recommendations come and when will they be implemented? If we talk about the timeline of the last two pay commissions, then the Sixth Pay Commission was constituted in October 2006, its report came in March 2008, which was approved in August 2008 and it was implemented with retrospective effect from 1 January 2006.
Similarly, the Seventh Pay Commission was constituted in February 2014. The report was submitted to the government in November 2015. However, it was approved in June 2016 and came into effect with retrospective effect from 1 January 2016.