7th Central Pay Commission's salary claim irks military

NEW DELHI: The armed forces are upset with the 7th Central Pay Commission (CPC) for relying upon "inadequate and selective data" to arrive at "inaccurate and skewed analysis" on several counts as well as not resolving the persisting "core anomalies" in their salary structures left behind by the last pay panel.

Sources on Monday said the armed forces are planning to make a representation to the government on the entire matter after studying the 7th CPC recommendations - which will now be sent to all ministries and departments for their comments and suggestions - in a detailed manner.

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The three Services, for instance, scoff at the 7th CPC report holding that the pay of defence service officers, which begins with an initial edge, "remains uninterruptedly higher" than their civil service counterparts over a 32-year period.

"This is only true for .01 per cent of defence officers who reach the level of a Lt-General (or additional secretary) in the steeply-pyramidal promotional structure of the forces. As for the other 99 per cent military officers, they are overtaken by their civil service Group A officers by the 15th year of service," said a source.

An officer who becomes a Colonel after 18 years of service roughly gets around Rs 63,000 as a total of the basic pay, grade pay and the military service pay (MSP), without taking allowances into account. An IAS officer, in turn, becomes a joint secretary - a rank equated with a Major-General in the military - in around 18 years of service and gets about Rs 75,000.

"If the MSP is removed from the equation, the gap becomes even wider. And unlike the forces, over 80 per cent of IAS officers become joint secretaries. Similarly, the CPC has arrived at other lopsided interpretations based upon one-sided data," said the source.

Pointing out several other such discrepancies, the armed forces feel their long-standing complaint about their eroding "status, parity and equivalence" as compared to their civilian counterparts will get worse if the government accepts the 7th CPC recommendations without proper modifications.

While opinion within the CPC was divided on extending NFU (non-functional upgrade) for military officers denied promotions due to lack of vacancies, as is the norm in the organised Group A civil services, the other four "core anomalies" pointed out by the armed forces have remained unresolved.

These are the need for all JCOs (junior commissioned officers) and soldiers to get "common pay scales", grant of "uniform grade pay", proper "initial pay fixation" of Lt-Colonels, Colonels and Brigadiers, and placement of all Lt-Generals in the HAG+ (higher administrative grade) pay-scale like directors-general of police.