The Cabinet on Saturday approved a 2 per cent increase in Dearness Allowance (DA) for Central government employees, as per sources.This comes amid wider demands from employee bodies for major changes in pay structure under the proposed 8th Pay Commission.In its memorandum, the National Council-Joint Consultative Machinery (NC-JCM) has sought a higher fitment factor of 3.83, which could raise the minimum basic pay from Rs 18,000 to about Rs 69,000.It has also proposed expanding the definition of “family” for pay calculations to include dependent parents, and suggested a cap on pay disparity, along with higher increments and inflation-linked allowances.Meanwhile, the Cabinet is also said to have approved a Sovereign Maritime Fund with a corpus of Rs 13,000 crore to provide stable and affordable insurance cover for Indian-flagged, India-bound and India-originating vessels.It is also learnt to have extended the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) till 2028, with an additional allocation of Rs 3,000 crore.
