Former Finance Secretary Atanu Chakraborty to Chair West Bengal's 7th State Pay Commission

The West Bengal government has constituted its 7th State Pay Commission and named Atanu Chakraborty, a 1985-batch IAS officer of the Gujarat cadre and former Union Finance Secretary, as its Chairman, according to a Finance Department resolution issued on July 22.

The four-member commission will review the pay structure, dearness allowance, pensions, allowances and service conditions of lakhs of state government employees and pensioners, and has been asked to submit its recommendations within six months, with the state retaining the option to extend the timeline if needed. The move follows Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari's announcement that the government intends to implement the commission's recommendations within the current financial year, a step framed as delivering on one of the BJP's electoral commitments in the state.

Chakraborty is one of India's more prominent economic administrators, with a career spanning more than 35 years before his retirement from the civil services in April 2020. He holds a B.Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from NIT Kurukshetra, a postgraduate diploma in business finance from ICFAI Business School, and an MBA from the University of Hull in the United Kingdom. In Gujarat, he held posts including Principal Secretary of the Finance Department, Additional Chief Secretary for Industries and Mines, and leadership roles at Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation and Gujarat State Fertilizers and Chemicals.

At the Centre, Chakraborty served as Director General of Hydrocarbons from 2016 to 2018, overseeing India's upstream oil and gas sector, before moving to the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management, where he led the disinvestment programme and helped the government exceed its annual target by mobilising close to ₹85,000 crore against a goal of ₹80,000 crore. He capped his government career as Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs from 2019 to 2020, a role that put him at the centre of Union Budget preparation, fiscal policy and sovereign borrowing, and gave him a seat on the Reserve Bank of India's central board.

After retiring, Chakraborty joined HDFC Bank as Part-time Chairman and Independent Director in 2021, with Reserve Bank of India approval, and was reappointed for a second term in 2024. He stepped down in March 2026, saying that certain governance practices at the bank over the previous two years did not align with his personal standards, a resignation that drew considerable attention in banking and corporate governance circles. He has also worked as a Global Leadership Fellow at Harvard University's Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, where his research covered public finance, infrastructure privatisation and corporate governance.

The commission's other three members are Partha Mukhopadhyay, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research; Professor Partha Pratim Pal, an economist at IIM Calcutta; and Devi Prasad Karanam, the state's own Finance Secretary. Its terms of reference cover salary and allowance structures, a formula for future dearness allowance revisions, pension fixation for retirees, rationalisation of allowances such as Special Allowance and Travelling Allowance, and measures to improve efficiency, accountability and work-life balance in government service, while also accounting for the Centre's upcoming 8th Central Pay Commission.

Adhikari has said the government intends to close the gap between central and state dearness allowance gradually rather than through a sudden hike, after already announcing a 20-percentage-point increase in the June Budget. The commission will be based in Kolkata but is authorised to meet elsewhere in the state or in New Delhi as required, as it works through a mandate that will shape pay and pension outcomes for a large section of the state's workforce. The panel's recommendations, once submitted, will need cabinet approval before implementation, a process that state officials expect to begin as soon as the six-month review window closes, given the government's stated intent to roll out changes within the current financial year.