The Telangana government has offered to release two of the six pending dearness allowance instalments owed to state employees and pensioners, while stopping short of firm commitments on their other major demands. Under the proposal, one instalment would be paid around Dasara and the second around Ugadi, and officials indicated a further instalment could follow after about four months. The offer came during talks that Chief Secretary Sanjay Jaju held with employee unions at the Secretariat in Hyderabad on Wednesday. The government said the DA arrear proposal would be placed before the state Cabinet for approval. On the new Pay Revision Commission, officials told union leaders that the commission’s report is expected in another one to two months, after which a political decision will be taken.
The commission had originally been asked to report by mid-September, so the timeline has already slipped. On pending bills, unions sought restoration of monthly clearances of around Rs 2,000 crore, but the government said it can currently manage roughly Rs 1,000 crore a month. On the long-standing demand to scrap the Contributory Pension Scheme, the state proposed a joint committee of employees and officials to study the issue, without setting a deadline. The response has split the employee bodies. The Telangana Employees Joint Action Committee led by Maram Jagadishwar said the talks failed to yield concrete, time-bound decisions on its four core demands and called an emergency state-level meeting on Thursday to decide its next steps.
A rival JAC led by V. Lachi Reddy took a more positive view, saying the Chief Secretary responded favourably and urging the government to prioritise employee and pensioner concerns. The outcome leaves the Revanth Reddy government facing the possibility of renewed agitation from a section of its workforce in the run-up to the festive season.