Service chiefs write to Parrikar, express concern about 7th Pay Commission’s recommendations
In
a rare move, the three service chiefs — Army Chief General Dalbir
Singh, Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha and Navy Chief Admiral Robin Dhowan —
have sent a joint memorandum to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar
expressing concern about the Seventh Pay Commission’s recommendations.
They have sought an expert committee, with representatives from the
armed forces, to redress the grievances identified by the defence
services.
Defence
ministry sources said Parrikar has already had an informal interaction
with the three service chiefs, and a detailed presentation on all the
issues raised in the joint memorandum will be held this week.
The
memorandum, sent last week, follows another complaint made by the armed
forces to the defence ministry last month on military personnel who
seek premature retirement being excluded from the ambit of One Rank One
Pension (OROP) scheme.
The
pay commission cells of the three defence services have listed some
common grievances after a detailed study of the 900-page report. Members
of these cells said that prima facie, the report has used incorrect and
irrelevant data, leading to wrong analysis and skewed interpretation.
They
claimed that almost all proposals submitted to the pay commission
through a joint services memorandum have been rejected without providing
any justification, or without even mentioning them. They pointed out
that the pay commission, on the other hand, has mentioned the proposals
of all other categories of central government services, analysing and
commenting on each of them in detail.
“The
Seventh Pay Commission has glossed over the core anomalies of the Sixth
Pay Commission, which had put military personnel at a disadvantage.
Those have not been resolved, making the situation worse,” said a senior
military official.
Wrong
pay fixation of military officials, particularly in the ranks of Lt
Colonel, Colonel and Brigadier, at a scale much lower than their
civilian counterparts, has been identified as a major issue because a
bulk of military officers serve in these three ranks for the longest
part of their career. The services also believe there is a disparity in
grant of allowances to military personnel vis-à-vis civilian officials.
The
defence services feel that the pay commission has erred in comparing
defence expenditure on salaries with expenditure on operation and
maintenance by the armed forces. They feel that the pay commission did
not undertake a similar exercise for the civil services and the central
armed police forces.
“Had
the pay commission done that, it would have been an eye-opener to the
nation to know in how little amounts the armed forces which constitute
30 percent of the central government employees live, survive and
function effectively by efficient management of resources as compared to
their civilian counterparts,” the military official argued.
Wrong
pay fixation of military officials, particularly in the ranks of Lt
Colonel, Colonel and Brigadier, at a scale much lower than their
civilian counterparts has been identified by the defence forces as a
major issue because a bulk of military officers serve in these three
ranks for the longest part of their career. The service headquarters
also believe that there is a disparity in grant of a large number of
allowances to military personnel vis-à-vis civilian officials. Even
hardship and field area allowances extended to central armed police
forces have not been offered to the armed forces, they say.
According
to a senior military official, “the traditional parity with civilian
employees, which had been under attack by successive pay commissions
against the interest of armed forces, has been further accentuated by
the Seventh Pay Commission, in contravention of its terms of reference.
Its recommendations have brought the armed forces even below all other
uniformed services of paramilitary forces”.
The
armed forces believe that the grant of Non Functional Upgradation
(NFU), where a government official gets his pay increments even if he is
not promoted in rank, has been made applicable to the military
personnel in a superficial manner. NFU was granted to all the civilian
officials in the Sixth Pay Commission and the armed forces have been
demanding it since.
“Take
the issue of disability allowance. The civilian employees have been
getting a percentage of the basic pay as disability allowance since
1996. It was extended to us in the Sixth Pay Commission. Now it has been
taken back and military has been reverted to a slab-based thing,” a
senior military official said.
Source :http://indianexpress.com/
