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A very important news is coming for lakhs of central employees and pensioners across the country. There is a lot of stir these days regarding the 8th Pay Commission. The Commission is currently busy taking feedback and suggestions from various employee organizations, unions and stakeholders. Meanwhile, the National Council-Joint Consultative Machinery (NC-JCM), the largest organization of central employees, has put forward a brilliant proposal before the government, which has caught everyone’s attention. If the government gives green signal to this proposal, then in the coming days the entire structure of salary and promotion of government employees will change.

In fact, NC-JCM has recommended to the government that many of the existing pay levels should be merged together. The employee organization clearly believes that in the present system there are many such pay levels, the difference in salary between which is nominal, but there is a huge difference in terms of post and grade. Due to this, there is dissatisfaction among the employees for a long time and this is directly affecting the speed of their promotion.

Why was the demand raised to merge pay levels?

Let us try to understand why this big change was needed. NC-JCM has said in its plea that the existing pay matrix should be simplified as much as possible. The organization proposes that Level-2 and Level-3 should be merged into one. Similarly, Level-4 and Level-5, Level-7 and Level-8, as well as Level-9 and Level-10 should be combined together to form a combined pay scale.

The employee organization argues that the responsibilities and work of the employees working in these levels are almost the same. In fact, there is not much difference in their take-home pay either. Despite this, due to different pay levels, there is an unnecessary inequality among employees in offices, which affects their morale. If these tiers are merged, the entire pay structure will become extremely transparent, easy and equitable.

Preparation to send these employees directly to Level-6

This proposal includes another surprising and relief demand. The organization has demanded that the employees currently working at Level-5 should be directly upgraded to Level-6 under a special one-time provision.

It is being told that thousands of Group-C employees in big government departments like Central Secretariat, Indian Railways, Postal Department and Defense Ministry are stuck at the same Level-5 for years. Because of this, his career growth has completely stopped and he is not getting opportunities for promotion. If they are directly upgraded to Level-6, then this obstacle in their career will be removed forever.

Also recommended to increase basic salary to ₹69,000

The matter is not limited to just merging pay levels. NC-JCM has demanded to directly increase the minimum basic salary to ₹69,000 to provide direct benefit to the employees’ pockets. Apart from this, it has also been advocated to increase the 3 per cent annual increment (salary increase) to 6 per cent and to implement a new model fixing the salary in proportion to inflation.

Recall that the 8th Pay Commission was constituted in November 2025 and the Commission is holding continuous meetings. The deadline for taking suggestions has ended on June 15 and the work of collecting data from the departments will be completed by the end of July. About 1 crore employees and pensioners of the country will benefit from this entire change.

However, employees need to keep in mind that all these are just suggestions at the moment. The final decision will be taken only after the report of the 8th Pay Commission and the approval of the Central Government. The commission is expected to submit its final report by February or April 2027. Even if the government accepts these recommendations, it may take 2 to 3 years to be completely implemented on the ground. This means that employees will be able to get the real benefit of the new pay structure only till the year 2029 or 2030.