Ranchi, June 29: The Jharkhand government is fiscally fit to shell out the extra Rs 2,819 crore if the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations for central employees and pensioners, that were okayed by the Centre today, come into force for state employees.

State additional chief secretary Amit Khare, who heads the state planning-cum-finance department, told The Telegraph that the financial health of the state being "good", there would be no problem in extending the Seventh Pay Commission benefits to over 1.62 lakh regular state government employees.

"We are a budget surplus state. The state government can implement the recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission," Khare said.

Currently, the state has 1,62,232 regular government employees. In the 2015-16 financial year, the total salary bill of the state was Rs 8,199 crore. Furthermore, the state paid Rs 3,969 crore as pension.

"We will need to pay Rs 1,866 crore more in salary and Rs 953 crore more in pension if Seventh Pay Commission recommendations are adopted," Khare said. "Jharkhand is financially sound to meet the budgetary demands," he said.

The state may also form a committee to look into the execution of the new pay scales.

As soon as Jharkhand gets a copy of the gazette notification of Seventh Pay Commission recommendations, the state finance department will put a memorandum before the cabinet for its approval, after which the panel would be formed to oversee the revision.

The latest pay panel had estimated that the implementation of its recommendations could result in an additional burden of Rs 1.02 lakh crore to the exchequer for India.

Asked if employees of the state government were getting Sixth Pay Commission benefits, Khare said: "In principle, we are following all recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission from the date it was implemented in the Centre. There may be some deviation in pay scale and grades. But, state employees are getting all benefits, more or less."