In this section of the post, I discuss the topic of IAS officer compensation in India in depth, as well as the wage structure/pay scale of IAS officers as recommended by the 7th Pay Commission.
With everything out of the way, let me get right to the subject.In India, the starting salary for an IAS officer is Rs. 56,100 per month (excluding DA, TA, and HRA). This amount could rise to Rs 2,50,000 per month, which is the remuneration of India’s Cabinet Secretary.
When it comes to an IAS officer’s gross monthly income, it varies from state to state and district to district. This is because the gross IAS income each month includes things like house rent allowances, and because house rent allowances vary by state, we can’t give a standard gross monthly salary for each of the IAS postings.
However, the gross monthly salary typically varies from Rs. 56,000 to Rs. 1,50,000 (approx.) depending on the different allowances.
IAS Officer Salary Structure – 7th Pay Commission
I have included the salaries of IAS officers according to the various roles that they hold and the number of years that they have served in a tabular format. Also, keep in mind that these salaries are based on the 7th Pay Commission’s recommendations.
The IAS pay in India is listed above in the chart, but it does not include the many allowances that the government provides to these officers, such as House Rent Allowances, Dearness Allowances, Travel Allowances, Medical, and so on.
IAS Officer Allowances
So let me clear it for you once and for all, allowances here are of multiple types – House Rent Allowance (HRA), Dearness Allowance (DA), Travel Allowance (TA), etc. Meaning that the gross monthly salary or the total monthly salary of an IAS officer = Basic monthly pay + Allowances.
HRA (House Rent Allowances)
An IAS officer is eligible to receive an HRA when he needs to live in a rented accommodation at the place of his posting. His HRA depends on the kind of posting he gets. To put things into perspective, here are some points:
- The HRA of an IAS officer is 24% of the Basic Salary if he gets posted in one of the 8 metro cities in India, namely Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, and Pune
- If the IAS officer gets posted into smaller cities with a population of above 5 lakhs, then he’s eligible for an HRA of 16%
- If the IAS officer gets posted into a rural setting, then he’s eligible for an HRA of 8%
DA (Dearness Allowances)
DA started from 0% after the 7th pay commission recommendation and it stands at 31% as of December 2021. As mentioned earlier, this component is linked to inflation. DA is revised twice a year based on the recommendation of the Cabinet Committee chaired by the Prime Minister.
However, remember that the DA had touched 107% of the Basic Pay in 2015 (before the 7th pay commission implementation).
TA (Travel Allowances)
The TA is credited by the government into the accounts of the IAS officers to help them meet their travel expenses.
As the DA, the TA is also not something that is static. It changes from time to time, depending on the rise and fall of fuel prices.
The starting basic salary of IAS officer is Rs. 56,100 per month. And that is just the basic monthly salary of an IAS officer without taking into account all the perks and allowances that he is eligible to receive, like Dearness Allowance (DA), Transport Allowance (TA), and House Rent Allowance (HRA), and so on and so forth. Therefore, the starting gross salary can get close to Rs. 1,50,000 per month (depending on the DA & other allowances at the time).
Also, to note is that this base monthly salary of an IAS officer is when he’s been in the civil services for 1-4 years. So, after 4 years the basic monthly salary of IAS officers increases to 67,700 INR. However, since the question asks about the starting salary of an IAS officer, I will stop right there.
This is an important question. So, the answer is, the state government pays the salary of IAS officers. Now, you might be thinking that how is this possible when the IAS officers have been selected via the UPSC, and not the State PSCs. Well, the explanation for this is that the salary of IAS officers is decided and fixed by the Union Government of India. However, it is the State government that pays the salary of IAS officers, to those assigned to the state in question.
Well, I can tell you the basic monthly salary of an IAS officer who’s been in service for 1-4 years, and that is Rs. 56,100. That’s of course excluding all the allowances that he/she receives.
So, to find out the per day salary of the IAS officer we’d just need to divide the base monthly salary amount by 26, considering that Saturdays are mostly working for IAS officers. So the per day salary amounts to around Rs. 2,157 excluding daily allowances (HRA, DA etc.).
