Pay Commission: In defence of its own goof up by the Ministry of Defence

No:1(5)/2006/D(Pay/Services)
Government iof India
Ministry of Defence
New Delhi, the 29th August, 2006

Subject: Extension of Benefits of the judgement of the High Court of Kerala in Writ Petition filed by Maj AK Dhanapalan (Retd) to similarly affected persons.

Sir,

I am directed to refer to your letter dated 19th July, 2006 addressed to Director(Fin/Est/MO) in this Ministry on the above subject and to state that in pursuance of the order of the High Court of Kerala in the above said case, sanction for re-fixation of the pay and pension of the petitioner was issued in August, 2005 and arrears of Rs 28,031/- were paid to him.

1. Consequent to the said judgement, the Ministry has been receiving a number of representations from retired/ serving Defence officers for grant of similar benefits. Some of the retired officers have filed Writ petitions in various High Courts. In this connection, it is stated that all these officers did not take up this issue with the concerned authority in their Service Headquarters and with this Ministry through statutory complaint and other channels and have now raised the issue almost 20 years later. The principles of latches is, attracted in the instant case.

2. Moreover, records of so many officers belonging to eighties and early nineties will not be available.

3. The matter has been carefully considered and it has been decided to contest the writ petitions filed in various High Courts. At the same time, the Ministry of Defence has decided to file Special Leave petitions/ Review Petition in the Supreme Court against the judgement of the High Court of Kerala in Maj AK Dhanapalan's case.

Your faithfully
sd/-
(R K Grover)
Under Secretary to the Govt of India

Posted by Lt Col CPC Nath (Retd)
RTI Request for the pay refixation information

Comment: A typical bureaucratic reply to scuttle court rulings! A bureaucrat expects each and every officer to indivdually file statutory complaints through proper channel. God bless the nation and the Military whose job is to defend the nation. Do Military Personnel have time to file millions of Statutory Complaints against the Pay commissions through the cobwebs of Bureaucratic morass?
What is "Principle of Latches"? This, one thought is a colonial law to which there are many keys to unlock. The Bureaucrats seem to have lost the keys in the piles of files created by babudoom!

Resolution of pay commission anomalies
The veterans of Dehradun held a press conference on 5th Nov 2008 at Press Club and placed before the Media facts of the case explaining how the matter can be solved. The Press conference was addressed by Brig KG Behl president Dehradun Ex- Services League on behalf of all. We requested the media which is very powerful to project and take up the case to settle the case which is not very difficult to solve if the Govt. decides to implement the Court judgments which are already there. Instead of further waiting and unnecessarily delaying its implementation they should gracefully accept the mistake made in deducting the Rank Pay from Basic Pay from 1.1.1986 when they showed the Rank Pay having being paid in individual Pay Slips of officers but actually deducted from their basic Pay. This deduction resulted in lowering of Basic Pay on which everything is worked and based on viz. Scale, Status, Grade, Allowances etc, and this deduction has brought Defence Forces lower than their civilian counter parts in every respect.

Once the Hon'ble Courts have held the orders wrong and those have been implemented in one of the cases by the Govt. they should honorably implement that order in other cases and restore the deductions of Rank Pay made from other similar cases.

If they restore this deduction made all the anomalies automatically get solved as explained in our Press release (posted in the blog). I would request you to to circulate it to all concerned, including the officials and members of different committees concerned and the hon'ble Prime Minister so that without further delay the matter gets solved. Government can always implement cases by declaring to honour the Court judgment even when those are so called sub- judice. The problem gets gracefully resolved.

Regards,
Brig KG BEHL (Retd)
President Dehradun Ex- Services League