8th Pay Commission One Year On: Report Due by May 2027, No Fitment Factor Yet; DA Raised to 63% From July 2026

New Delhi, 12th November 2026: The 8th Central Pay Commission completed one year on 3 November, and searches for news on it are climbing again. The short answer: its report is due by around May 2027, and no fitment factor or new pay scale has been announced.

What has changed for staff is the dearness allowance. The Union Cabinet raised DA and dearness relief by 3 percentage points to 63 percent, effective 1 July 2026, The Federal reported on 28 October.

What is confirmed about the 8th Pay Commission

The commission was formally set up on 3 November 2025, after the Cabinet cleared its terms of reference on 28 October 2025. It is chaired by retired Supreme Court judge Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai, with Professor Pulak Ghosh as part-time member and Pankaj Jain as member-secretary.

It has 18 months to submit its report, which places the deadline around May 2027. It may also send interim reports.

What the commission has done so far

According to a timeline compiled by Barristery from official notices:

• A questionnaire for employees and the public went live on MyGov in February 2026 and closed on 31 March.
• Unions and associations could submit memoranda until 15 June 2026.
• The commission held consultations in 13 cities between April and October, including Mumbai on 22 and 23 October.

Fitment factor: what is real and what is guesswork

No fitment factor has been fixed. Figures such as 1.86, 2.28 or 2.86 that circulate online are illustrations or union demands, not official numbers.

For reference, the 7th Pay Commission used a fitment factor of 2.57, which raised the minimum basic pay from Rs 7,000 to Rs 18,000. Any new factor will be known only after the report is submitted and the government accepts it.

Be wary of salary calculators and videos that promise exact new pay. None is based on an official number yet.

The DA hike to 63 percent

The latest DA increase is the one change that has reached pay slips. Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced it after the Cabinet meeting on 28 October.

• DA and DR rise from 60 to 63 percent of basic pay or pension.
• It is effective from 1 July 2026, so arrears for July to October are due.
• It covers about 48 lakh employees and 68 lakh pensioners, at a yearly cost of about Rs 10,016 crore.

For example, an employee with a basic pay of Rs 40,000 gets Rs 1,200 more a month in DA.

What it means for central staff in Pune

Pune has a large central government workforce, from Southern Command and defence establishments such as the Armed Forces Medical College, DRDO labs and ordnance units, to Central Railway’s Pune division, postal staff and central universities and institutes. Thousands of defence and railway pensioners also live in the city.

For them, the DA arrears are the immediate gain. A pay revision under the 8th commission depends on the report and the Cabinet’s decision on it.

What is still not known

The government has not said when revised pay would actually be paid, how arrears would be handled, or what the new pension formula will be. We will update this story when there is an official announcement. More national news is in our India section, and money updates in Markets and money.

This article is for general information and is not financial advice.

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