Sixth Central Pay Commission : Armed forces irked over Pay Commission report

Sixth Central Pay Commission : Armed forces irked over Pay Commission report

NI Wire

New Delhi, Tue, 02 Sep 2008

Following the notification of Sixth Central Pay Commission (CPC) for Central Civil Employees, the government of India on Monday issued the improved 6th Pay Panel recommendation for the officers of armed forces in a move to implement it on September 01, 2008. But the army officers are not pleased with this notification and top level officials of all the three wings are reportedly considering to meet Defence Minister A K Antony to again review the 6th CPC report.

The Ministry of Defence has accepted the recommendations of Sixth CPC and for implementing it on time, it has issued the notice on Monday. The move of issuing notification refers the move of salary fixation that would be implemented from this month and would come into effect from January 01, 2006.


The Defence Ministry has accepted the modified format of new pay revision that would be 1.86 times more on basic salary while Sixth CPC has recommended it to implement with the multiplication of 1.74. The Defence Ministry has also accepted to distribute arrears in cash in two parts: 40% in this fiscal while 60% in the next fiscal. The recommendation of hiking annual increment from existing 2.5% to 3% has also been accepted while the rates of Special Forces Allowance for Army and Air Force has been equated with Navy's Marine Commando Allowance.


The government has also rejected the same recommendation that it had done in Central employee pay recommendation including flexi hours for women and disable persons, restricting to only three government holidays and Liberal 'severance package' for those employees who want to leave service without pension with more than 15 years but less than 20 years service.

But, the armed officials are not happy with all and want further rectification in the modified salary structure. They are arguing that Sixth CPC recommendations have enhanced the inequality between the salary structure of civil officials and the defence officials especially the mid-level officials whose ranking is considered equivalent to any Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officials.

As per defence officials, Majors and Lieutenant Colonels who were at equivalent salary scale of Rs.15,100 in the fifth CPC recommendation would now get Rs.11,000 less from the IAS officers. Moreover, the Lt General second highest ranked army officers who command over 40,000 troops will get less salary than the Director Generals of Printing, Stationary and many more who have no operational role.

The mid-level of army officials like Majors, Lieutenant Colonels that are nearby 25,000 in all wings of defence are considered as cutting edge of forces.

According to sources, Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor, Naval Chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta and Air Chief Marshal F H Major are considering to meet the defence minister to revive it once again before imposing this ‘disparity’ pay scale.


Source: http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/14773