Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee led West Bengal Government has introduced new allowance to Top Level IAS officers. Now the Chief Secretary and Additional Chief Secretaries will be given an additional sum of 34,000 rupees as Sumptuary Allowance every month. Sumptuary allowance is completely tax free and specially given to various grades of personnel in the central government, to compensate for the expenditure incurred on entertaining visitors.
According to the sources a sum of 20,000 & 17,000 will be given to the officers in the rank of Principal Secretary and Secretaries respectively. Generally Sumptuary allowance has a maximum limit of 10,000 for the central government employees therefore the sum announced by the West Bengal government is comparatively higher than the normal amount and becoming a matter of controversy.
“The new allowance was introduced from November 1. A section of central government officers gets the sumptuary allowance, but this is the first time it is introduced in Bengal,” said an official. The decision of this new allowance for the senior IAS officers was taken soon after the state had hiked the special allowance for senior IAS officers up to Rs 5,000 a month in November.
