Analysis of Government's Affidavit on Rank Pay Case submitted to Supreme Court

by Major Navdeep Singh

Rank Pay Case

Many people keep inquiring about the status of the Rank Pay case which is now fixed for 22 Nov 2011 before the Supreme Court. Since the case is pending adjudication before the highest Court of the land, it is not proper to go into the merits of the stand taken by both parties before it.

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However, I cannot help but make the following observations on the affidavit filed by the UOI while seeking a review of the judgement (Sorry, this may be a bit technical) :-

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While the Hon’ble Court had only sought information regarding point to point pay fixation with reference to a specific rank during the 4^th CPC, the UOI has gone out to project charts related to 4^th, 5^th and 6^th CPCs showing comparison of the pay being received by Army officers vis-à-vis civilians.

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On Page 10 of the affidavit, a Captain during the III CPC has been truly and correctly shown equivalent to the closest corresponding scale of Senior Time Scale, both of which start with the amount of Rs 1100. However on Page 18 relating to the V CPC, a Captain’s scale (starting Rs 10000) has been shown as corresponding to Junior Time Scale (starting Rs 8000) by the UOI which in fact is lower than even the starting of a Lieutenant (starting Rs 8250). Hence, in order to show a skewed pay comparison, it seems that it has been attempted to project that a Captain is getting much higher pay than the closest corresponding civilian scale. In short, while on Page 10 a Capt has been shown corresponding to STS, on Page 18, the same Capt is shown corresponding to JTS. Even the nomenclature of the scales such as JTS, STS, JAG, SG etc has not been mentioned perhaps to confuse the entire issue.

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On Page 11, the III CPC corresponding scale of a Major (starting Rs 1450) has been shown as the Junior Administrative Grade (starting Rs 1500) but on the next page, that is Page 12, even a Lt Col has been show corresponding to the same civil Junior Administrative Grade (starting Rs 1500). How can two military scales be shown equal to the same Junior Administrative Grade ? Even a Lt Col’s scale has been mentioned wrongly on Page 12 (Rs 1550 – 1950) whereas it actually was Rs 1750 – 1950. In fact, the closest scale to a Lt Col was the civil Selection Grade scale (Rs 1800 – 2000) which has not been reflected at all by the UOI. If at all a comparison was to be made, it could have been made between the Lt Col’s Selection Grade military scale with a start of Rs 1750 and the civil Selection Grade scale with a start of Rs 1800. The UOI has tried to compare the pay-scale of a Brig starting from Rs 2200 with a civil scale starting from Rs 2000 rather than comparing a Col (Rs 1950) with the closest civil scale starting with Rs 2000 and Brig with the closest scale starting with Rs 2250. Instead again a higher military scale has been shown alongwith a lower civil scale in an attempt to show that military officers were getting a higher fitment than civilians.

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On Page 20, in the illustration of pay fixation, a Major’s salary (starting Rs 12800) has been compared with a civil scale starting from Rs 10000 (Senior Time Scale / Scale No S-19) whereas the actual closest corresponding civil scale was Junior Administrative Grade (IAS) Scale / S-22 with a start from Rs 12750. Hence rather than comparing the fixation of pay between the military scale starting with Rs 12800 with the closest civil scale starting with Rs 12750, the UOI has attempted to compare it with a much lower civil scale starting with Rs 10000 whose closest equal is a Captain who also has a start of Rs 10000. Again the UOI has attempted to misleading show that military officers are getting a much higher pay than civilians.

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Again on Page 22, the UOI has tried to misleadingly compare the scale of a Lt Col (start of Rs 15100) with a civil scale with a start of Rs 12000 (Junior Administrative Grade / S-21) whereas the closest possible corresponding scale was that of Selection Grade / S-25 also having a start of Rs 15100. Shockingly, the UOI has attempted to compare the start of Lt Col’s scale (Rs 15100) with a civil scale with a start of Rs 12000 which is even lower than the start of a Major’s scale (Rs 12800).

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On page 26, it can be clearly seen that officers from Lieut till Major are in Pay Band -3 (Rs 15600 – 39100) while officers from Lt Col to Maj Gen are in Pay Band – 4 (Rs 37400 – 67000). Similarly on the civil side, it can be seen that officers from S-24 scale (Selection Grade) onwards, that is, pre-revised civil scale with start of Rs 14300 onwards, are in Pay Band -4. However again shockingly, the UOI has tried to show a Lt Col’s scale (pre-revised start of Rs 15100) of Pay Band - 4 as corresponding to the civil scale (with pre-revised start of Rs 12000) of Pay Band – 3 in order to again portray that military officers are getting higher fitments than civil officers. It is actually the civil scale with start of Rs 15100 which is now in Pay Band – 4 which could have been compared with Lt Col’s scale with exactly similar start of Rs 15100 which is also in Pay Band – 4. If we compare these two scales, it can be seen that while the point to point fixation of a Lt Col with a start of Rs 15100 has been Rs 38530 in Pay Band – 4, the exactly similar corresponding civil officer with a start of Rs 15100 has been granted a fixation of Rs 39690.

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On Page 29, again the pay of a Captain in Pay Band-3 but with Grade Pay of Rs 6100 has been shown corresponding to a Junior Time Scale officer in Pay Band-3 with Grade Pay of Rs 5400 in order to prove that a Captain is getting a higher pay. However this is also totally incorrect since it can be seen that a Junior Time Scale officer with Grade Pay of Rs 5400 can only be compared with a Lieut of the Army who is also in Pay Band – 3 and who also gets a Grade Pay of Rs 5400 as becomes clear from Page 26 of the affidavit filed by UOI. Hence a civil officer with a Grade Pay of Rs 5400 who is exactly equal to a Lieutenant, is being shown corresponding to the scale of a Captain just in order to wrongly prove that the Captain is getting higher pay. Needless to say, if a lower civil scale is shown in comparison to a higher military scale, the total amount reflected in the civil scale would be lower than that of the military scale.

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The following was the proper comparative situation of Army officers vis-à-vis civilians prior to 4^th CPC when rank pay was introduced. :-

III CPC

Junior Time Scale (JTS) 700– 1300	Lieutenant 750– 870
Senior Time Scale (STS) 1100– 1600	Captain 1100– 1550
Junior Administrative Grade (JAG) 1500– 2000	Major 1550– 1800
Selection Grade 1650– 1800 and 1800– 2000	Lieut Colonel (Selection Grade) 1750-1950
DIG Scale 2000– 2250	Colonel 1950– 2175
Addl IG Scale (later merged with IG/SAG) 2250– 2500

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