Patna, May 14: Around 4 lakh retired state government employees will have to wait for revised pension according to the recommendations of the seventh pay commission.

The report of the three-member state pay commission chaired by former Bihar chief secretary G.S. Kang, expected to be submitted to chief minister Nitish Kumar in a couple of days, includes recommendations on salary scale for the 3.5 lakh serving Bihar government employees, but contains no proposals on the revised pension structure.

"This is because the central government has not finalised the pension band or structure based on the seventh pay commission recommendations for its retired employees. Instead, it has put an ad-hoc structure for pensioners," a member of the state pay commission told The Telegraph.

"If we had to fix everything independently, we would have completed it by now. But we are following the central government's salary and pension structure. Hence, we thought it prudent to wait for the Centre to finalise the structure for its employees, before fixing our own. Basing the pension structure for Bihar on Centre's ad-hoc arrangement would not serve the purpose," the pay commission member added.

The state pay commission report has nothing on revised allowances for its employees, as it is waiting to base it on the allowances structure expected to be finalised by the central government in the coming days. The Centre is expected to finalise allowances and pension structure over the next few weeks, which will then be brought before the Union cabinet for its nod.

The Nitish Kumar government has decided to grant a two-month extension to the state pay commission so that it could complete its work.

The state pay panel was constituted on December 21 last year, with Kang as chairman, finance department secretary (expenditure) Rahul Singh as member secretary and rural works department secretary Vinay Kumar as member.

It was given a mandate to submit recommendations on the award of seventh pay commission benefits to employees and pensioners within three months, and has gone beyond the deadline.

"The extension became necessary because the central government has not finalised and released its report on allowances that would be given to the employees. We also want that pensioners are covered and receive the benefits of the seventh pay commission," Kang said.

Kang had been yearning to return to Chandigarh, where he is settled with his family. He is around 75, and has been here since December last year. He helped the state government in successfully organising the 350<+>th<+> Prakash Utsav, the birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh.

The state pay commission assured that the employees would get pay bands similar to that awarded by the Government of India to its employees. Once the state pay commission submits its report, it will be sent to the cabinet for approval.

Finance officials said the state spends around Rs 40,000 crore per year on salary and pension of its serving and former employees and the revised pay scale and pension will cast an additional burden of 17 per cent.