7th Pay Commission: Military chiefs to seek Manohar Parrikar's intervention to resolve pay anomalies next week By Rajat Pandit (TNN)

NEW DELHI Dec 19, 2015 : Furious with the "several glaring inaccuracies and anomalies" in the recommendations of the 7th Central Pay Commission, the armed forces have demanded setting up of an independent expert body or a parliamentary committee to examine their concerns about their eroding status, pay and pension vis-a-vis their civilian counterparts. 

Sources say the three Service chiefs - Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha, Admiral Robin Dhowan and General Dalbir Singh Suhag - will meet defence minister minister Manohar Parrikar next week to urge the government to resolve eight "critical issues and persisting core anomalies" before implementing the 7th CPC. 

The armed forces say if the 7th CPC is implemented without the necessary modifications, it will lead to widespread distress among military personnel because the already existing disparity with their civilian counterparts will get further accentuated. Parrikar, on his part, has declared he will see to it that the concerns of the Army, Navy and IAF are suitably addressed after the three submitted a joint representation to the government. 

The armed forces have complained that the new pay matrix used by the 7th CPC, which has replaced the earlier pay bands with grade pay, has used differential principles and discriminatory yardsticks for structuring the salaries of military personnel. This will lead to stagnation as well as lesser pay and allowances for military personnel as compared to their civilian counterparts at corresponding stages. 

The armed forces have also pointed out that successive pay commissions had traditionally recognised their parity with the Indian Police Service. But the 7th CPC, taking recourse to selective data and analysis, has downgraded the armed forces to the level of central armed police forces (CAPFs), say sources. The pay panel has also ignored the need to extend military service pay (MSP) to major-generals and above, as also the need to grant higher MSP rate to junior commissioned officers in recognition of their Group B gazetted officer status.

Moreover, while the CAPFs have now been given the opportunity to choose the better option between the military risk/hardship allowances and the similar operational allowances already available to them, this reciprocity has not been extended to the armed forces.

Similarly, the pay panel has ignored the recommendation to extend the Army's "highly active field area" or the "modified field area" allowances to naval and air force personnel deployed in similar operational environments.

As for pensions, the joint services memorandum have criticized the 7th CPC for not providing compensation to military personnel for their early retirement ages and truncated careers, as also for recommending that the calculation of the disability pension be changed from the existing percentage-based system to the earlier slab-based system.

(Source- TOI)