30 August :As 50-lakh employees eagerly await enhanced pay this September after the Sixth Central Pay Commission was notified, the armed forces have raised a dissent, with Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta voicing the anomaly in the pay scales of middle-rung officers to Defence Minister A K Antony.
Mehta, who met Antony to brief on his recent visit to Japan and Korea, raised the issue of Lt Colonels and their equivalents in Navy and IAF placed in Pay Band-3, lowering the extant of parities, while their civilian and paramilitary counterparts were raised to Pay Band-4.
"The Navy chief discussed the matter with the Defence minister in his late evening meeting Friday and the Ministry is now seized of the matter," top Navy sources told the news agency on Saturday.
Mehta also met Defence secretary Vijay Singh and raised the issue, they said.The Ministry, sources said, is likely to take up the matter at the highest level in the government to address the grievances of the armed forces, even though the CPC had already been notified late on Friday night.
The anomaly was first articulated by Air chief Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major in a letter to the Defence Minister on 25th August, while acting as Chairman of Chief of Staff Committee as incumbent Mehta was on in Japan and South Korea.
Major said it was "unfortunate" that the Finance Ministry had introduced yet another anomaly, "lowering the extant parities of officer of the Armed Forces of the rank of Lt Colonels (and equivalent) by retaining them in the Pay Band-3, while raising similarly placed civilian and paramilitary officer to Pay Band-4."
Previously a Lt Col was drawing more pay than a Civilian officer in the S-24 Pay Scale and equal to S-25. In fact the at the outer end of pay scale a Lt Col drew slightly greater than even S-25 scale. Now both S-24 and S-25 will draw a substantially higher salary even after offsetting the new benefit of MSP.
Pay Panel believes in ‘Zor ka jhatka, dheere se lagaao’. They first issue press release indicating a special improvement of pay exclusively for defence and then one gets to read the fine print much later. By that time all headlines are already published based on the press release. Even the chiefs did not get the wind of this before the notification. That speaks of the decision making process.