Agartala, Sep 20 (IANS): Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb has demanded Rs 1,500 crore from the Centre to hike salaries and allowances of 214,661 state government employees and pensioners, an official said here on Thursday.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance government is keen to implement the party's pre-poll promise to raise the salaries and allowances of the state government employees and pensioners in line with the proposals of the Seventh Central Pay Commission.

Deb on Thursday met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi and discussed about the requirement of additional Rs 1,500 crore to implement the recommendations of the 7th CPC for the state government employees and pension holders.

"Besides the central assistance, the Chief Minister also apprised the Prime Minister about the BJP-led government's task to make Tripura a drug-free state.

On Wednesday he also met Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in this regard.

The BJP government in its first Cabinet meeting on March 10 had constituted an expert committee headed by former Assam Chief Secretary P.P. Verma to make suitable recommendations for raising the salaries and allowances of the state government employees and pensioners in line with 7th CPC, the official said.

"The state government last week (September 14) extended the period of submission of report of the Verma committee till November 30," the official added.

Currently, Tripura government has 158,220 different categories of state government employees and 56,441 pensioners.