Forces Pay Hike vs Sixth Pay Commission.

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After the Armed Forces expressed huge disappointment over the Sixth Pay Commission report and rejected it outright, the PMO intervened and formed a 3-member committee to look into their grievances.

After consulting with the PM, who is away on a foreign visit, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee formed a committee with two other members Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Defence Minister A K Antony. Mr. Pranab Mukherjee will head the committee.

The committee will look into objections raised by armed forces over the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations. Defence Minister AK Antony expressed hope that armed forces will get their pay in new scales by Diwali.

He also assured that all anomalies in the pay will be duly addressed. The Defence Services have decided to accept the revised pay scales and submit the salary bills to the ministry until the committee submits its report the cabinet.President Dr. Pratibha Patil took note of the concerns of the armed forces and gave her sanction to the order for ad-hoc payment of arrears, which will help the defence personnel to manage their Diwali expenses.

Armed forces chiefs had made it public that they are not going to implement the 6th Pay Commission recommendations in its present form. They had clearly said that the discrimination in payment of officials in armed forces viz a viz civilian officials was unacceptable.There was also talked of armed forces personnel going to celebrate Divali as black day.

But luckily it seems that the direct intervention of Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh from New York broke the ice and defence minister AK Antony gave his consent to form a panel to look into the anomalies in pay structure of armed forces.

There was also pressure from Defence Minister AK Antony on armed forces chief to implement the 6th pay commission from this month. He had made it amply clear that if the forces chief do not implement it, defence ministry will issue order in this regard.Luckily things seem to have been sorted out for now with armed forces chiefs deciding to toe the government line for now as the panel headed by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has been formed to look into the anomalies.I

n the meantime Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor on Sunday clarified that there were no differences between Government of India and armed forces over the anomalies in the Sixth Pay Commission report.

Army Chief said, “I want to clarify that talks of differences between armed forces and Indian Government is not correct and has been played up incorrectly”.“The fact that the Defence Ministry, Defence Minister and the Prime Minister are with us shows that he (Antony) is also part of the government, as we are. So there are no differences.

I think it has been played up a little incorrectly," General Deepak Kapoor said.He went on to add, “we have made our recommendations and government has set up a committee and let see how the deliberations go."After Prime Minister’s direct intervention on the issue the Centre hurriedly constituted the committee, which also includes Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Defence Minister A K Antony. The committee is expected to give interim relief within a week.

The Centre also said that all pending issues of the armed forces on pay hike would be resolved by the end of October.

Giving defence personnel reasons to cheer before Diwali, the government had yesterday ordered release of their ad-hoc arrears for the current year this week, even as the government said the armed forces would submit fresh salary vouchers tomorrow, paving the way for the 1.5 million personnel to take home the revised pay on October 1.

But the "discriminatory" pay commission report would come under fresh scrutiny with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is abroad, setting up a high-level ministerial committee yesterday to address their grievances. In the meantime after the setting up of the committee, the three service chiefs have decided to accept the revised salaries as per the sixth pay commission report.

They would submit the revised salary bills to the Union defence minister on Monday.Armed forces have claimed several anomalies in the revised pay structure. One of them being in the Lt Colonel rank and below. “A Lt Colonel is now paid Rs 10,000 less than his civilian counterparts. Over 19,000 officers are in this rank. Colonels and equivalent will get at least Rs 10,000 less than their counterparts in civil services and other Central organisations,” a senior army officer said.
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