Status of Rank Pay denied by the Fourth Pay Commission to the Armed Forces

Dear Friends,
Jai Hind.
Reference Rank Pay case hearing in Supreme Court on 18 Oct 10.
Two important inputs are reproduced below.
In service of Indian Military Veterans
Chander Kamboj.

On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 10:27 AM, Col NR Kurup wrote:
I doubt whether you had a look at the file notings of the Defence Secretariat file on the issue. Anyway, I had a look at it. In case you have not seen it so far, kindly go through it. If you seek inspection of the file under RTI Act, you will get it. Let me point out the following aspects:

As per Defence Ministry's note, dated 22-12-2009 the financial implications were estimated t be Rs.433 cores without taking into account financial implications on pensionary benefits in respect of army and navy officers.

It was referred to Legal Adviser (Def)

The Legal Advisor was of the opinion that review can be done on following grounds:
a. Discovery of new facts.
b. Mistake or error apparenton face of record and
c. Any other sufficient reason
d. It has gone to the solicitor General
e. The Joint Secretary(L) Anand Misra had pointed out that "In view of the huge financial implications and importance of the case, it is proposed to get it assessed by a High Power Committee consisting of Defence Secretary, Secretary, Dept of Expenditure and Secretary (Defence Finance)
f. The RM has approved constitution of the above Committee
g. This Committee has worked out the expenditure as - Arrears on account of pay and pension to be around Rs426 crores and Rs83 crores respectively. Interest @ 6% per annum on these arrears as ordered by the SC to be Rs 1,114.71 crores and the total financial liability comes to around Rs 1,623.71 crores.
h. The case was pursued purely on taking of the above mentioned one-time financial implication and enhanced recurring implication.
i. In nutshell it may be seen that only the financial im0plication was the criteria for the government to seek the review/recall and not the merit of case

Now we should recollect following:
a. The arrears was resulted due to the misinterpretation of the 4 PC orders by the babus
b. The mistakes were corrected and the correction has been ratified by the HC and SC
c. Now the position is that the above amount is due to officers. ie. amount due to the employees of government. It is legally incumbent on the employer ie the government to pay this due to its employees.
d. Government cannot absolve from this liability on a plea that the amount is too high.
e. If the government is not capable of discharging its liability, it has no choice other than declaring itself 'INSOLVENT'. After becoming insolvent, the employees are entitled to seek their dues by REVENUE RECOVERY.

I therefore request the concerned to bear in mind the requirement of the government becoming INSOLVENT to escape the payment and our entitlement to get our dues by REVENUE RECOVERY. I also request the concerned to impress all concerned that the interest of Rs.1,114.71 crores cannot be considered as the expenditure as the entitled interest has always been more than 6% and more than Rs 1114,71 has already gained by government by withholding the dues from us. This is as good as returning our DSOP deposit. This can never be considered as an additional burden. In fact, we should insist payment of interest at market rate from 8-3-2010.
Col NR Kurup (Retd)