The Union Cabinet on Thursday, October 21 hiked dearness allowance and dearness relief by 3 per cent to 31 per cent, which will benefit about 47.14 lakh central government employees and 68.62 lakh pensioners. This was informed by Information & Broadcasting Minister Anurag Singh Thakur.

The Cabinet gave approval to release an additional instalment of dearness allowance (DA) to central government employees and dearness relief (DR) to pensioners with effect from July 1, 2021. Briefing the media after the Cabinet meeting, Thakur said that this three per cent increase will be on the existing rate of 28 per cent of the basic pay or pension. He said that this will cost Rs 9,488.70 crore to the exchequer on account of both dearness allowance and dearness relief.

He informed that today (Thursday) India achieved a remarkable feat by administering 100 crore COVID-19 vaccines and appreciated the efforts of all the frontline workers, healthcare workers and states and union territories for making this possible.

Replying to a question regarding the relaxation in COVID protocols after 100 crore vaccinations, Thakur said that due to strict adherence to the COVID protocols, the impact of the pandemic is now substantially less but it is not over yet.

"The government has been relaxing the protocol from time to time. The experts have been advising people regularly but the pandemic has not gone yet and all are advised to follow the health protocol and use of face mask", he added.

The Minister said that the PM Gati Shakti - National Master Plan for multi-modal connectivity to economic zones was also approved by the Cabinet and the Cabinet Secretary will monitor the development of this master plan periodically.

With PTI and IANS inputs