New Year brings more pay for armed forces

NDTV Correspondent
Thursday, January 01, 2009, (New Delhi)

There is good news on New Year for over 12,000 officers in the armed forces.

After months of uncertainty, Lieutenant Colonels and their equivalent officers in the Indian Air Force and Navy will now be placed in a higher pay category and status, Defence Ministry sources said.

As first reported by NDTV on December 22, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has cleared the proposal that will put at least Rs 12,000 more in the pockets of the officers every month.

The notification in this regard is expected to be issued shortly.

However, the other proposal to equate Lieutenant Generals and their equivalent officers in the other two services with Director Generals of state police has been rejected by the government, despite being aware that this decision is likely to create functional problems between the civilian officers and Lieutenant Generals.
New Year brings more pay for the armed forces

The government, however, has apparently rejected the fourth "core demand" of granting uniform grade pay to officers of armed forces on par with civilian officers, said sources.

As reported earlier by TOI, the armed forces blame "bureaucratic subversion" for introducing "far more serious anomalies" in their pay scales rather than resolving the ones present in the 6th Pay Commission report.

The armed forces, in fact, hold that their extant parity with their civilian and paramilitary counterparts had been "destroyed" by the new pay scales.

They were upset over the "extant parity" of Lt-Col rank officers being lowered by retaining them in Pay Band-3 (Rs 15,600-39,100), while raising similarly placed civilians and paramilitary officers to PB-4 (Rs 37,400-67,000).
Armed forces all set for pay hike