DA Hike: Approximately 1 crore central government employees and pensioners are eagerly awaiting the dearness allowance (DA) hike. This will be the last DA revision under the 7th Pay Commission, which is scheduled to end in December. The central government had suspended three instalments of dearness allowance and dearness relief (DR) for central employees during the coronavirus pandemic. In such a situation, the question arises whether the central employees and pensioners will get the outstanding arrears of these 18 months? According to news published in The Economic Times, the government informed Parliament that it had decided to suspend the payment of three instalments of 18 months, due on 1 January 2020, 1 July 2020, and 1 January 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, India’s economy had deteriorated.