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New Delhi: Contending that dilution of parity with the bureaucracy and paramilitary forces will hinder their operations, the armed forces want the cabinet, rather than the anomalies committee, to consider their demands over the pay panel report.
The Chiefs of Staff Committee chairman and Indian Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta wrote a letter to Defence Minister A.K. Antony September 1 saying these core issues, if left unaddressed, will result in "despondency" among the armed forces.
Mehta said in the letter that the erosion of parity between the armed forces officers and their civilian and paramilitary counterparts would affect the joint operations.
"The command and control functions will be seriously hampered between army, BSF [Border Security Force] and CPMF [Central Paramilitary Forces], where infighting will jeopardise operations," the letter says.
Sixth Pay Commission
The reviewed report of the Sixth Pay Commission has upgraded the civilian and paramilitary counterparts of the officers of the ranks of lieutenant colonel and equivalent to the higher pay band.
Because of this, the civilian officers who were in the lower pay bracket and were hitherto drawing lesser pay than lieutenant colonels and officers of equivalent ranks would now draw a higher basic salary.
In fact, subsequent to the revised report, even a short-service commissioned officer in paramilitary forces will get higher pay than most permanent commissioned officers in the armed forces.
Besides drawing a higher pay, the civilian and paramilitary officials have gained ascendancy in terms of ranks on their armed forces counterparts.
As the armed forces and paramilitary forces have to work in tandem, Mehta has underscored that this lack of parity is "unacceptable" to the officers belonging to the senior services, that is the army, navy and air force.
He urged the defence minister that the relativities between the armed forces and paramilitary and bureaucracy be "immediately restored".
Earlier, the Personnel Below Officer Ranks (PBORs) used to draw a pension in proportion to their years of service, but after the reviewed report they will get a pension of half of their last pay drawn.
"The PBOR are put at a disadvantage as due to truncation of career they retire early and draw lesser pay relatively and hence ending up getting lesser pension," Mehta said in the letter.
The letter is seen as the move to preempt the defence ministry's move to send the demands of the armed forces to the finance ministry's anomalies committee.
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