For all those who are wondering why the Prime Minister only briefly touched the matter regarding implementation of the recommendations of the Committee of Secretaries examining pay and pension anomalies of the services and did not fully discuss the details in his Independence Day Speech, it would be worthwhile to inform that firstly the Committee could not submit the report by 08 August 2012 as envisaged by the order of the PMO and there still were some loose ends and some dissenting voices from the side of the Defence Ministry. And secondly, it has come to note that the implementation could not be officially announced because of the lack of a cabinet nod and hence the absence of the formal acceptance of the report by the govt. Mr Deshmukh’s untimely demise added to the delay.
On implementation, which should be in the very near future, the military community can expect bridging of the gap between pre and post 2006 retirees by further enhancement of weightages for pension, enhancement of pension of commissioned officer retirees on the principles of modified parity, dual family pension for widows, removal of bar of continuance of family pension on marriage of handicapped kin, introduction of common pay-scales for ranks below commissioned officers and non-functional upgradation (NFU) for commissioned officers. Civilian pensioners can also be expected to be benefited as a result of modification of pensionary modalities.
Enhancement of Grade Pay for commissioned ranks and enhanced initial pay fixation for Lt Cols, Cols and Brigs may not be recommended by the committee and would in all probability be kept pending for further deliberations.
Still, there’s many-a-slip in the domain of officialdom, as we all know, hence reactions on the fresh provisions should be reserved till the time the recommendations are officially notified as accepted with full details.
Courtesy: Major Navdeep Singh
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