Aim for civil-defence pay parity

On June 29, despite grave concerns raised by defence services following the recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission, they were flagged and presented to the Cabinet committee. Unfortunately, the defence forces find no change in the government’s announcement made after the presentation. Non-resolution of these core issues will widen the disparity between the defence forces and their civilian counterparts to an irretrievable stage and lower the rank-status of defence services officers for posterity. This will be extremely detrimental to the morale of the armed forces who are the last bastion and have never failed the nation.

During deliberations of the Sixth Pay Commission, despite instructions by then defence minister A.K. Antony and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the bureaucracy tried hard to degrade the armed forces and succeeded in doing so partially.

This time around, despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi and defence minister Manohar Parrikar assuring the defence services of giving them their due, the bureaucrats have compounded the pay anomalies and widened the pay disparities between the defence and civilian services.

How the bureaucracy deflected, dragged and delayed implementation of the one rank one pension (OROP) repeatedly assured by Mr Modi and Mr Parrikar is a classic example.

Matters started going awry after the Sixth Pay Commission award effective from January 1, 2006. The India Administrative Services elevated itself to be “first amongst equals” by making the government grant two additional promotion increments only to IAS officers, at 4, 9 and 13 years of service.

It also started enjoying special duty allowance at three times the rate for Organised Group ‘A’ Services — 37.5 per cent for the IAS vs 12.5 per cent for others. Thus, the seeds of disparity and discontentment were sown amongst Central government services.

Another blow was that Non-Functional Upgradation (NFU) which was extended to Indian Police Service, Indian Forest Service and all Organised Group ‘A’ Services (with IAS as benchmark) but denied to defence and Central Armed Police Force isolating/relegating them to a lower version of Organised Group ‘A’ Services.

To arrest the growing disparity in promotional avenues between IAS and Organised Group ‘A” Services to a maximum of two years, the government recommended the scheme of NFU — a time-bound enhancement of pay but not promotion.

By virtue of NFU, the pay progression gets linked to years of service. This scheme was implemented after the Sixth Pay Commission and implies that if an IAS officer of the 1998 batch is promoted as joint secretary, all officers of the 1996 batch of Organised Group ‘A’ Services will be upgraded to Rs 10,000 i.e. grade pay of a joint secretary.

Defence services — despite having the poorest promotion prospects due to their steep rank structure and are compulsorily retired much earlier than all All-India Services/Group ‘A’ Services — were unfairly denied the grant of NFU.

Defence officers are the only class of Central government employees who weren’t granted any form of assured financial progression.

The objective of NFU is “to address wide disparity in career progression/promotional avenues of different Central services”. Organised Group ‘A’ Services and All-India Services attain the scale of senior administrative grade (SAG) at 20 years of service and scale of higher administrative scale (HAG) in about 28 years, irrespective of the post held.

In defence services, the SAG pay scale is achieved only by 0.61 per cent that too at 30 years of service, and HAG scale only by 0.18 per cent after 34 years of service.

Denial of NFU to defence services officers has had a serious impact on the functioning, command and control as well as relativities between them and the Central civil services officers. The benefit of NFU has been extended to Organised Group ‘A’ Services who had been a notch lower than the defence service officers and operate with the defence services in a supporting role.

Defence services officers are regularly posted to organisations like Indian Naval Armament Service, Indian Ordnance Factories Service, Indian Defence Service of Engineers (who along with Army officers of the Corps of Engineers, serve in Military Engineering Service), Defence Aeronautical Quality Assurance Service, Defence Quality Assurance Service, Defence Research and Development Service, Survey of India Group A Service, Border Roads Organisation, etc. They are facing serious command and control issues besides this disparity having deleterious effect on morale.

In insurgency prone states where a unified command system exists, defence services officers, police and other civil officials are required to work together for effective and coordinated counter-insurgency operations.

In such a situation, an IG of Assam Rifles, who is a Major-General in command of operations may require the presence and advice of a DIG of CRPF, an IPS officer, who is paid Rs 10,000 as NFU grade pay, and will refuse to obey the orders and command of the IG. This will lead to command and control problems during counter-insurgency operations and could have grave repercussions during war.

If NSU is granted to defence services officers now then it should be with retrospective effect on paper, even if not actually paid and treated as “notionally” paid so that the pension of those affected is not reduced. And if this could not be done then at least the rank status of defence services officers should be protected.

Bureaucracy in the Sixth Pay Commission succeeded in creating anomalies/disparities despite Mr Antony and Dr Singh personally prevailing on them. The implementation of OROP recently even if short of the ultimate form in letter and spirit on a couple of aspects, was dragged for two years owing to bureaucratic “interpretation” and its callous attitude towards armed forces. Both Mr Modi and Mr Parrikar who had assured its implementation, had to assert themselves.

Following the approval of the Seventh Pay Commission by the Cabinet Committee, the only hope for the defence services is an intervention by Mr Modi and Mr Parrikar before the government memorandum is published.