Mamata Banerjee on Sunday announced the impending release of DA arrears and a hiked honorarium for “purohits and muezzins”, the move coming just before the model code of conduct was to kick in and bar such election sops.
It was 3.05pm when Mamata declared that state government employees would start receiving their dearness allowance arrears from this month, while somewhat opaquely tying the modalities to the “Notifications issued by our Finance Department”. These notifications had not been made public by late evening.
Earlier, at 2.40pm, the chief minister had announced a fourfold hike — from ₹500 to ₹2,000 — the monthly honorarium paid to Hindu priests and Muslim clerics.
At the pre-scheduled hour of 4pm, the Election Commission began notifying
the Assembly elections in Bengal.
The Election Commission’s notification at 4pm on Sunday brought the model code of conduct into effect, barring the announcement of new or hiked welfare schemes.
Senior officials were, however, unsure whether the DA announcement would have fallen foul of the model code, anyway, given the Supreme Court’s February 5 directive to Bengal to clear the dues accumulated between 2008 and 2019 and pay the first instalment by March 31.
They said the chief minister might have tagged the DA announcement with the one on the hiked honorariums to create a good feeling among her government’s lakhs of employees ahead of the polls.
Mamata needs to mollify these employees — aggrieved at the delay in the release of DA arrears and wooed aggressively by the BJP — since they play a key role in the conduct of the polls, especially in the booths on polling day.
It remains unclear what would now happen to the yet-to-be-heard review petition that the state had filed against the Supreme Court’s February 5 order, indicating its continued reluctance to clear the DA arrears.
However, things changed after Union home minister Amit Shah announced
in South 24-Parganas a few days ago that if the BJP came to power, it would clear all the dues within 45 days, officials said.
“Shah also said that a BJP government in Bengal would implement the 7th Pay Commission recommendations (against the currently implemented 6th Pay Commission) within 45 days of coming to power. The announcements attracted the government employees, which the ruling party noticed,” a bureaucrat said.
Another official said: “From the presiding officers to the fourth polling officer, those who manage the elections in the booths are all state government employees. If they are unhappy, the ruling party should be worried.”
In a post on her X handle, the chief minister said the employees would “start receiving their… DA arrears from March 2026 onwards as per the modalities detailed out in the Notifications issued by our Finance Department”.
Until the notification is uploaded to the finance department’s website, the employees cannot know how much they would receive this month or how many instalments there would be.
Finance department sources said a court-appointed three-member committee — headed by the retired Supreme Court judge, Justice Indu Malhotra — had decided the modalities for the release of the DA arrears.
Bhaskar Ghosh, a leader of the Sangrami Joutha Mancha, the platform that spearheaded the employees’ agitation for the payment of DA arrears, attributed Mamata’s announcement to her electoral compulsions.
“We had to fight them year after year in the courts to get our legitimate dues. When the apex court finally decided in our favour, the state filed a review petition to deprive the employees,” he said.
“Since we are preparing to fight the state again in court, it has hurriedly announced the first instalment of the payment.”
Bengal government employees have had to wage a nearly seven-year legal battle — from the state administrative tribunal to Calcutta High Court to the Supreme Court — to receive their DA arrears.
Before the DA announcement, Mamata had in a post on X announced the hike in the honorariums for priests and clerics.
She had added that “all fresh applications” for the honorarium “submitted by purohits and muezzins have also been approved by the State Government”.