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Quick Answer
The chairman (chairperson) of the 8th Pay Commission is Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai, a former Supreme Court judge. She leads a three-member Commission with Prof. Pulak Ghosh (Part-time Member) and Pankaj Jain (Member-Secretary). The Union Cabinet approved her appointment along with the Terms of Reference on 28 October 2025, and the Commission was formally constituted by Gazette Resolution on 3 November 2025. It has 18 months to report, so its recommendations are due around May 2027.
Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai: Profile
Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai (née Samant) was born on 30 October 1949 in Bombay. She studied at Elphinstone College (BA, 1970) and Government Law College, Bombay (LLB, 1973), and enrolled as an advocate on 30 July 1973. Her early practice was in criminal law, partly alongside her father, criminal lawyer S. G. Samant.
She spent much of her career representing the State. She became an Assistant Government Pleader at the Bombay High Court in 1979, an Additional Public Prosecutor for Maharashtra in 1983, and a Special Public Prosecutor for preventive detention cases in 1986. She was appointed an additional judge of the Bombay High Court on 15 April 1996 and a permanent judge on 12 April 1998.
On 13 September 2011 she was elevated to the Supreme Court of India, only the fifth woman to sit on that court, and served until 29 October 2014. Among the benches she sat on were those that:
- directed the Government to phase out the Haj subsidy by 2022 (May 2012, with Justice Altamas Kabir); and
- recognised voters' right to a "None of the Above" (NOTA) option (September 2013, three-judge bench with CJI P. Sathasivam and Justice Ranjan Gogoi).
Since retirement she has led several high-profile public bodies, which is a big reason she was chosen to head a commission whose recommendations touch more than one crore employees and pensioners.
Career Timeline
- 1973 Enrolled as an advocate; criminal-law practice in Bombay.
- 1979–1995 Assistant Government Pleader, Additional Public Prosecutor and Special Public Prosecutor for the State of Maharashtra.
- 1996 Additional Judge, Bombay High Court (permanent from April 1998).
- 2011–2014 Judge, Supreme Court of India.
- 2014–2019 Chairperson, Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL); also headed the Authority for Advance Rulings (Income Tax) in 2018–19.
- 2018–2020 Chaired the search committee that shortlisted candidates for India's first Lokpal.
- 2020 Chairperson, Delimitation Commission (including the Jammu & Kashmir delimitation exercise).
- 2022 Headed the expert committee that drafted the Uniform Civil Code for Uttarakhand; appointed Chairperson of the Press Council of India.
- 2025 Reported to have chaired Gujarat's expert committee on a Uniform Civil Code.
- 28 October 2025 Named Chairperson of the 8th Central Pay Commission.
The common thread is experience in running large, politically sensitive exercises that end in a formal report the Government must then accept or modify, exactly what a Pay Commission does.
The Other Two Members
Prof. Pulak Ghosh — Part-time Member
Pulak Ghosh is a tenured professor of Finance, Decision Sciences and Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. He is a statistician and economist who works on big data, household finance and public policy. According to his official profile on 8cpc.gov.in, he has been a Senior Fellow at NITI Aayog, a member of the National Statistics Commission, chaired SEBI's committee on AI in trading, worked on the 2018 payroll-based employment estimates using EPFO data, and helped shape the PM-KISAN scheme in 2019. Expect his influence in how the Commission uses data, for example in benchmarking government pay against the private sector and in modelling the fiscal cost.
Pankaj Jain — Member-Secretary
Pankaj Jain is a 1990-batch IAS officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre with more than 35 years in government. Before joining the Commission he was Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, and earlier Additional Secretary and Joint Secretary in the Department of Financial Services. He is a commerce graduate, a management postgraduate and a qualified cost accountant. As Member-Secretary he runs the Commission's secretariat — data requests to ministries, the memorandum portal, the state visit schedule and the drafting process — and holds the rank of Secretary to the Government of India.
What the Chairperson Actually Does
The chairperson does not set your salary alone. A Pay Commission is an advisory body. Under its Terms of Reference, it:
- Collects evidence: the 18-question MyGov questionnaire (closed 31 March 2026), memoranda from associations and ministries (closed 15 June 2026), and data from departments.
- Hears stakeholders: state visits from May to October 2026 — Delhi, Hyderabad, Srinagar, Ladakh, Lucknow, Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, Jaipur, Chennai, Puducherry, Chandigarh, Bengaluru and Mumbai.
- Weighs fiscal limits: the ToR asks it to consider the economic situation, the need for fiscal prudence, the unfunded cost of non-contributory pensions and the impact on state finances.
- Recommends a pay matrix, fitment factor, allowances, pension and gratuity rules.
The chairperson presides over all of this and signs the final report. The Government then decides whether to accept, modify or reject each recommendation, and only the resulting notification changes your pay.
Why This Team Matters for Your Salary
- A judge at the helm means a report built on documented evidence and reasoned arguments. The 5th, 6th and 7th CPCs were also led by judges.
- A data economist as member suggests more benchmarking with private-sector and market data, and attention to productivity-linked pay, both themes of the Commission's questionnaire.
- A finance-ministry veteran as Member-Secretary keeps the fiscal-cost lens front and centre.
None of this tells us the fitment factor. Employee bodies have proposed figures from 3x to 4x (NC-JCM: 3.833; BPMS: 4.0), while analysts expect roughly 1.83x–2.46x. See all scenarios on our Fitment Factor Calculator.
Every Pay Commission Chairman Since 1946
| Commission | Period | Chairman |
|---|---|---|
| 1st CPC | 1946–47 | Srinivasa Varadachariar |
| 2nd CPC | 1957–59 | Jaganath Das |
| 3rd CPC | 1970–73 | Raghubir Dayal |
| 4th CPC | 1983–86 | P. N. Singhal |
| 5th CPC | 1994–97 | Justice S. Ratnavel Pandian |
| 6th CPC | 2006–08 | Justice B. N. Srikrishna |
| 7th CPC | 2014–15 | Justice Ashok Kumar Mathur |
| 8th CPC | 2025– | Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai |
Where the Commission Stands Now (27 October 2026)
- The last notified state sittings were Bengaluru (7–8 October) and Mumbai (22–23 October 2026). No further visits have been notified on 8cpc.gov.in as of 27 October.
- No fitment factor, pay matrix or allowance decision has been announced.
- The report is due by about May 2027; revised salaries are expected to apply from 1 January 2026, with arrears, but this is not yet confirmed.
Follow every update on our 8th Pay Commission Latest News page.
🧮 Try It Yourself
Work out your own numbers with the 8th Pay Commission Calculator for Central Govt Employees, the Fitment Factor Calculator or the Arrears Calculator.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is the chairman of the 8th Pay Commission?
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Who chaired the 7th Pay Commission?
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Sources
- 8th CPC — Part-time Member profile
- 8th CPC — Member-Secretary profile
- 8th CPC — official homepage
- Wikipedia — Ranjana Desai
- Indian Masterminds — 8th Pay Commission members
- Careers360 — Cabinet approves ToR of 8th Pay Commission