Wednesday, 1 August 2012
Tuesday, 31 July 2012
Antony writes to PM over wages, pension of services men
NEW DELHI: Observing there was "growing discontent" among armed forces personnel over anomalies in pay-related matters, Defence Minister A K Antony has written a letter to the Prime Minister saying if "corrective action" is not taken, the issue might take a "bad turn".
After the letter was sent, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh constituted a high level-committee under the Cabinet Secretary to address issues such as One Rank One Pension (OROP) and elevation of all Lt Gen-rank officers into a higher pay scale.
In the letter written on June 25, sources said the Defence Minister has written that "there is growing discontentment among the services personnel due to the anomalies in fixation of payment and salaries."
Pushing the case for accepting the demands of serving and retired soldiers, Antony pointed out that the service personnel, exservicemen and family pensioners are "equally agitated" over the anomalies in their salaries. He told the Prime Minister that "unless we take corrective action, things may take a bad turn."
On July 13, the Prime Minister formed a six-member committee under Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth, which has been asked by the government to finalise its recommendations and submit its report to Manmohan Singh by August 8.
For serving defence personnel, the committee will look into the issues of having a common pay scale for serving Junior Commissioned Officers (JCOs), placing all Lt Gen-rank officers under the higher pay scale grade of Higher Administrative Group Plus (HAG+).
For the large community of exservicemen, the government has tasked the committee to consider the issue of One-Rank-One-Pension which has been the main demand of the services personnel and has seen a lot of them returning their service and gallantry medals to the President in the last few years as a mark of protest.
After the letter was sent, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh constituted a high level-committee under the Cabinet Secretary to address issues such as One Rank One Pension (OROP) and elevation of all Lt Gen-rank officers into a higher pay scale.
In the letter written on June 25, sources said the Defence Minister has written that "there is growing discontentment among the services personnel due to the anomalies in fixation of payment and salaries."
Pushing the case for accepting the demands of serving and retired soldiers, Antony pointed out that the service personnel, exservicemen and family pensioners are "equally agitated" over the anomalies in their salaries. He told the Prime Minister that "unless we take corrective action, things may take a bad turn."
On July 13, the Prime Minister formed a six-member committee under Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth, which has been asked by the government to finalise its recommendations and submit its report to Manmohan Singh by August 8.
For serving defence personnel, the committee will look into the issues of having a common pay scale for serving Junior Commissioned Officers (JCOs), placing all Lt Gen-rank officers under the higher pay scale grade of Higher Administrative Group Plus (HAG+).
For the large community of exservicemen, the government has tasked the committee to consider the issue of One-Rank-One-Pension which has been the main demand of the services personnel and has seen a lot of them returning their service and gallantry medals to the President in the last few years as a mark of protest.
Sunday, 22 July 2012
CONTEMPT PETITION - ARGUMENTS HEARD IN SC
Contempt petition filed in the Supreme Court came up before the Supreme Bench for arguments. Advocate appearing in the Court on behalf of Life Insurance Corporation of India argued that there was no contempt at all as there was no specific amount arrived at as due to the pensioners. Since the amount to be deposited is not quantified, it could not be presumed that there was any contempt of any order of the Court.
The Senior Advocate appearing for the petitioners argued that the amount could be arrived at by LIC as all the data required for calculation was available with LIC and it was up to LIC to decide the quantum.
Court heard these arguments and adjourned the case. Decision of the Court could be expected any time now.
ONE RANK ONE PENSION COMMITTE MEETING NEWS
On 18th July 2012, the three service chiefs, led by Admiral Nirmal Verma, Chairman Chiefs
of Staff Committee (CoSC) met with a high-powered Committee of
Secretaries constituted by the Prime Minister to resolve anomalies in
the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission award for the Armed
Forces.
Although a total of 39 anomalies have been identified
by the three services since 2008, they have decided to concentrate on
some core issues that directly affect both serving and retired armed
forces personnel.
The issues are:
Fixing common pay scales for all JCOs and ORs
Source: NDTV
- Grant of NFU (non-functional upgradation) status to commissioned officers
- Correcting difference in rank pay of commissioned officers
- Extending the HAG+ (Higher administrative Grade Plus) scale to all three star officers
- Granting One-Rank-One-Pension to retired personnel
There have been strong demands from ex-servicemen and from acting servicemen for One-Rank-One-Pay. And to push for their demands further, the three Service chiefs, led by Chairman of the Chiefs
of Staff Committee, Naval chief Admiral Nirmal Verma, along with his
colleagues, Chief of Air Staff ACM, NAK Browne and Army Chief General
Bikram Singh gave a detailed presentation to the Committee of
Secretaries on Wednesday.
The six-member committee, comprising the Cabinet
Secretary with the Defence Secretary, Secretary Ex-Servicemen Welfare,
Secretary DoPT, Expenditure Secretary and Principal Secretary to PM, as
members was set up by the Prime Minister after a Rajya Sabha panel last
year recommended granting One Rank One Pension to the retired defence personnel. The government has asked the committee to submit its report by August 8.
There is a buzz in the corridors of power that the
Prime Minister wants to make a grand announcement from the ramparts of
the Red Fort on August 15 and therefore the deadline of August 8!
For the uninitiated, the One-Rank-One-Pay scheme implies that uniform pension be paid to the armed forces personnel retiring in the same rank
with the same length of service irrespective of their date of
retirement, and any future enhancement in the rates of pension be
automatically passed on to past pensioners.
But the issue that has upset and angered serving defence personnel is NFU.
For those not in uniform it needs a bit of an explanation.
Buckling under pressure from Group A organised
Services under the Central Government like Border Roads Organisation,
Military Engineering Services, Postal Services, the Sixth Pay Commission gave them a special concession.
It allowed the officers in these services to be
placed in a grade pay scale equivalent to an IAS officer two years
behind that particular IAS batch. For example if the 1992 batch of the
IAS officer got placed in the Joint Secretary grade in 2012, all Group A
organised officers of the 1990 batch would automatically get the pay
and allowance equivalent to the 1992 IAS batch, irrespective of the post
and place they are serving in. That is the upgradation will be done on a
‘non-functional’ basis.
This has brought in huge functional problems in
day-to-day affairs when military officers have to work in close
coordination with MES Civil Officers, BRO Civil Officers, IPS Officers
in BSF, CRPF, ITBP, Defence Accts (IDAS), Test Audit (IA&AS),
Ordnance Factory Board etc, with whom Defence forces officers interact
regularly, will now get the salary and grade pay of Joint
Secretary/Major General (Grade Pay Rs. 10000/-) after 22 years of
service, and will draw the pay of Additional Secretary to Government of
India which is equal to a Lieutenant General (Grade Pay Rs. 12000/-) in
32 years of service whereas military officers senior to them in rank and
service will get less grade pay at the same level of service thereby
creating a functional disparity giving rise to insubordination and
subtle non-compliance.
Military officials have pointed out that this has
adversely affected organisational command and control in multi-cadre
environment. It also led to lowering the status of Armed Forces
Officials vis-a-vis organized Group A officers and IPS Officers.
Organized Group A and IPS Officers reach HAG (Higher Administrative
Grade) Scale at 32 years while only 0.2 per cent of Armed Forces
Officers can ever reach that level.
With over 97 per cent Armed Forces Officers retiring
in the Grade Pay of 8700, their exclusion from the NFU is seen as
grossly unfair. This differential not only disturbs financial parity, it
pushes down the Defence services in status as even direct recruit
officers of Group B services attain a better pay and promotional avenue
and manage to reach the level of Joint Secretary/Major General before
retiring.
Both the OROP and granting the NFU status to Armed Forces officials is not going to be expensive either.
According to calculations done by the military, the annual outgo for granting One -Rank-One-Pension
to the approximately 21 lakh ex-servicemen would not be more than Rs.
1300 crore. Similarly the NFU status, if granted, will cost the
exchequer a mere Rs. 70 crore annually but will go a long way in
restoring the pride and status of the armed forces’ officers.
The other core issues are minor in comparison but important nevertheless.
PRE-2006 MODIFIED PARITY CASE LATEST NEWS
- Case Reg: MODIFIED PARITY for Pre-2006 Case W.P. 1535/2012 Reg: Appeal against Judgment of CAT Delhi (in OA 655-2010) reg. Modified Parity for Pre-2006 Pensioners, came up before a new Bench (of Hon'ble Justice Badar Durrez Ahmad and Hon’ble Justice Siddharth Mridul) at item. 13) in Delhi High Court on 17.7.2012. It was adjourned for hearing on 29th November, 2012 (as no earlier date was available with the New Bench before which the case had been enlisted).
Friday, 20 July 2012
PRE-2006 PENSIONERS CASE HEARING ADJOURNED TO 29 NOV 2012
Case Reg: MODIFIED PARITY for Pre-2006 Case W.P. 1535/2012 Reg: Appeal against Judgment of CAT Delhi (in OA 655-2010) reg. Modified Parity for Pre-2006 Pensioners, came up before a new Bench (of Hon'ble Justice Badar Durrez Ahmad and Hon’ble Justice Siddharth Mridul) at item. 13) in Delhi High Court on 17.7.2012. It was adjourned for hearing on 29th November, 2012 (as no earlier date was available with the New Bench before which the case had been enlisted).
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