The decision was announced by Chief Minister Narayan Rane, accompanied by Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde, at a press conference in Mantralaya on Tuesday. Rane said that the pay hike would result in an additional burden of Rs 15.54 on the State exchequer annually.

``Anganwadis are run under a Central government scheme with only a part of the workers' honorarium coming from the State. The long pending demand of the workers has been accepted by the Cabinet today,'' Rane said, adding that each anganwadi worker will now get Rs 900 per month against the earlier amount of Rs 675 while an assistant will get Rs 500 against the Rs 385 per month.

Meanwhile, workers in the mini-anganwadis (those functioning in remote tribal areaswith less than 50 students) who received Rs 50 per month, will now get Rs 165. A total of 1,19,764 workers will benefit from the revision, Rane added.

The State Cabinet has, however, rejected the recommendations of the Sudhir Joshi committee. Education Minister Joshi had recommended a sum of Rs 1,500 per month for anganwadi workers besides various other responsibilities for them.

Rane added that the State had submitted a demand to the Union government to further hike the pay to the anganwadi workers as the scheme essentially came under the Central government. The decision regarding paying a bonus of Rs 250 to the workers as bhaubeej during Diwali has been kept pending by the State, Rane said. The idea of the same was conceived by former chief minister Manohar Joshi.