Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government has raised the monthly consolidated pay of retired government servants brought back on contract, fixing a new slab that runs from Rs 15,000 to Rs 55,000 and applying it at once to both existing and fresh engagements.
The Finance Department’s order on Thursday supersedes the remuneration order of September 29, 2022, and takes effect from the same day. The amount is over and above pension and temporary Increase. No dearness allowance or house rent is built into these consolidated figures.
Under the Odisha Revised Scales of Pay Rules-2017, the new monthly rates are fixed. The steepest jump, in percentage terms, is at the bottom. Levels 1 to 4 rise by Rs 5,000, or 50 per cent. Levels 5 to 10 also gain Rs 5,000, a 25 per cent increase. Senior levels move by Rs 4,000 to Rs 5,000.
The order leaves a wider door open for exceptional cases. Where the government wants a particular retired officer, pay can still be fixed on a “pay minus pension” basis, with no DA or HRA, but only after Finance concurrence and approval at the level of the Chief Minister. Specialist work for a defined tenure can be priced differently from the slab, again with the same two clearances. The government has also reserved the right to deviate in the public interest.
The memorandum does not cover constitutional or statutory posts, commissions and boards, or allopathic doctors and teachers of medical colleges re-engaged after retirement. Those categories continue under their own rules.
The revision lands against a sharper political backdrop. In opposition, the BJP had treated routine re-hiring of retirees as a practice to be curbed. After Mohan Charan Majhi took office, the General Administration department, on September 12, 2024, limited such engagements to 1 per cent of sanctioned strength at senior-branch level and above, required an open process and a committee headed by the Chief Secretary, and made Chief Minister approval mandatory, with no post-facto nod.
Thursday’s memorandum does not, on its face, repeal that 1 per cent ceiling or the selection filter. What it does is replace the 2022 pay grid, raise every slab, and say the new rates will run uniformly on old contracts as well as new ones. That is already enough to reopen the argument: a government that spent its first months tightening re-engagement has now made the contracts that survive the filter more lucrative, with the largest relative gain going to the lowest pay levels.
The order has been circulated to all departments, heads of department, collectors, RDCs, district judges and treasury officers, and is to be published in the Odisha Gazette and hosted on the Finance Department website.