Sixth Pay Commission: Pay panel report: Armed Forces feel cheated

Sixth Pay Commission: Pay panel report: Armed Forces feel cheated

NEW DELHI: Unbridled anger is brewing among the officers of the armed forces against the Centre for notifying the Sixth Pay Commission without taking into account their demands for restoring parity with their civilian and paramilitary counterparts.

With the officers raising their voice against the ‘‘mischievous bureaucratic design to cheat us once again’’, sources said the chiefs of staff committee, comprising General Deepak Kapoor, Admiral Sureesh Mehta and Air Chief Marshal F H Major, may even take up the issue with the government once more in a last-ditch effort.

The main grouse of the armed forces is that a ‘‘raw deal’’ has been given to Lt-Colonels and their equivalent ranks in IAF (Wing Commander) and Navy (Commander), the ‘‘cutting edge’’ of fighting formations, squadrons and warships.

‘‘The extant parity of Lt-Col rank officers has been lowered by retaining them in Pay Band-3 (Rs 15,600-39,100), while raising similarly placed civilians and paramilitary officers to PB-4 (Rs 37,400-67,000),’’ said an officer.

Lt-Col rank officers, incidentally, constitute the major bulk of the officer cadre in the armed forces. Of the 54,770 officers in the 13-lakh strong armed forces, almost 19,000 are Lt-Cols. These include 11,187 in the Army, 4,216 in IAF and 3,528 in Navy.

‘‘Civilian and paramilitary officers who were in a lower pay bracket and were hitherto drawing lesser pay as compared to Lt-Cols will now draw a higher basic salary in the running pay band,’’ said the officer.

Said another officer, ‘‘Lt-Colonels, for instance, will now be drawing Rs 14,000 less than director-level IAS officers and Rs 11,000 less than directors from other civil services. This is gross injustice.’’

The forces are also aghast at the government notification placing all directors-general of police and their equivalents over Lt-Generals by the creation of a new ‘‘higher administrative grade-plus’’.

‘‘The salary of DGPs has been fixed higher than Lt-Generals to further increase disparity. Till the Fourth Pay Commission, all DGPs were a rung lower than Lt-Generals. The Fifth brought the two on par,’’ said a senior officer.

‘‘The Sixth Pay Commission had maintained them on par but the empowered committee of secretaries that went into its recommendations has quietly placed Lt-Generals below DGPs,’’ he said.

The armed forces are, however, ‘‘satisfied’’ that most of the demands raised in connection with jawans, NCOs and JCOs have been met. There will be a 50% to 60% increase in salaries of PBOR (personnel below officer rank) as per the new notification.


Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/