RAIPUR: Ahead of the state general assembly polls, the Congress government in Chhattisgarh had taken major decisions in favour of the state government employees.

In the cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, decided to hike the Dearness Allowance (D.A.) for state government employees by 5 per cent. It will have an additional annual financial burden of Rs 1,000 crore to state exchequer.

The other decision is to reduce the eligibility period for full pension from 33 years to 30 years, and the qualifying service period for voluntary retirement has been reduced from 20 years to 17 years for the state government employees.

The cabinet gave the nod to fill 3,722 vacancies for teachers and 5,577 vacancies for assistant teachers in the Bastar and Surguja regions. A decision has been made to eliminate the mandatory requirement of subject-wise recruitment in the approved setup, relaxing the recruitment rules.

Relaxation in the validity period of one year of the selection list for the appointment to the positions of Cartographer and Surveyor in the Department of Mineral Resources has been given.

As per other decisions all forest guards appointed after the approved setup in the Forest Department, with effect from 26th March 2003, will receive pay scale of 3050-4590.

It was decided to provide senior-grade salary scales to junior officers of nearly 18 state administrative service officers in the junior category who joined in the year 2017 batch and are coming in the senior category salary scale to the vacant senior positions as per the previous practice.

Cabinet decided to give promotion from the Joint Collector senior category salary scale to the Additional Collector higher category salary scale, providing a 6-month relaxation in the 10-year service period, to eligible officers of the 2014 batch, thereby upgrading them to the higher category salary scale.