Pay commission: West Bengal govt appoints former IAS officer Atanu Chakraborty as Chairperson of 7th state CPC

The West Bengal government on 22 July officially constituted the state’s 7th central pay commission (CPC) and has appointed former government secretary and IAS officer Atanu Chakraborty as Chairperson of the panel, according to a PTI report.

This comes a day after Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari told reporters that his government will aim to implementing the 7th state CPC‘s recommendations in the current fiscal (FY 2026-27), it added.

Notably, the state approved the constitution of this panel in May, after the newly elected Bharatiya Janata Party-run (BJP) government assumed power that month. It was among the party’s top poll promises during the assembly election campaign.

West Bengal’s 7th state CPC: Who are the members?

According to a resolution from the state’s finance department, the four-member panel will together review allowances (including dearness allowance or DA), salaries (pay hike, etc.) and service conditions for state government employees and pensioners.

“The Commission will submit their recommendations as expeditiously as practicable but preferably within a period of 6 (six) months from the date of publication of this Resolution or such extended time as the State Government may consider necessary,” it added.

The three other members include Partha Mukhopadhyay, senior fellow at Centre for Policy Research, Partha Pratim Pal, a professor of economics at IIM Calcutta, and state finance secretary Devi Prasad Karanam.

Appointed as Chairperson, Atanu Chakraborty is a former Union economic affairs secretary and a retired officer of the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) 1985-batch. He served as secretary in the Ministry of Finance from 2019 to 2020 and subsequently officiated as the part-time chairman of a private bank until his resignation in March 2026.

7th state CPC: Check panel’s ToR, latest updates

The headquarters of the Commission shall be at Kolkata, but it may hold its sittings elsewhere in the state or in the national capital, if it deems necessary. The resolution outlined the panel’s terms of reference (ToR) as follows:

• Recommend the mode of initial pay fixation in the proposed pay structure for existing employees and the mode of revision of pension for existing pensioners.
• Examine the existing promotion policies and pension and allied benefits under existing death-cum-retirement benefit schemes, including medical benefits, if any.
• The panel is also likely to take the Centre’s 8th CPC recommendations under consideration, the order added.

Committed to narrow DA gap with Centre: Adhikari

CM Adhikari on 21 July told reporters that the state would constitute its 7th CPC and aims to implement its recommendations by March 2027. He added that the government is committed to narrowing DA gap with the Centre, but without abrupt revisions.

“We will gradually bridge the gap between the Centre and the state in DA. Some of you may have expected that we would announce a 42% DA in one go. There were also reports on social media that we would announce a 10% hike. We did neither. We calculated it carefully and will bridge the difference gradually,” Adhikari said. Bengal had in June hiked DA by 20 percentage-point in the state budget.

Adhikari also assured state government employees that pending DA would be paid in due course, adding that the proposed pay revision would be accompanied by a restructuring of the salary framework to bring state employees’ emoluments closer to those of their Central counterparts.