Government to approve pay panel report tomorrow

Civil servants, armed forces and paramilitary personnel will get to rejoice this Independence Day with the government all set to approve the Sixth Pay Commission report in  its Cabinet meeting tomorrow.        

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today chaired a meeting attended by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Defence Minister A K Antony and Finance Minister P Chidambaram and discussed the pay commission report and the recommendations of the empowered committee of Secretaries that went into the anomalies.     

"The Cabinet is likely to take up the sixth pay panel report for approval tomorrow and the matter was discussed at a meeting chaired by the PM today," official sources said.  

Though the sources  refused to share details of the meeting or the amendment to the pay panel report submitted by its chairperson Justice Sri Krishna earlier this year, the increase over the commission's recommendations are likely to be the tune of 1.83 times of the net pay for the armed forces personnel and a substantial raise for civil servants too.  

The pay commission had originally recommended that the pay for the armed forces be hiked by 1.74 times, calculated on the basis of the inflationary factors.  

When the Sixth Pay Commission had submitted its report, armed forces personnel had expressed their resentment, openly that also led to protest rallies by retired personnel, demanding a better deal considering the hardship factor involved in their services.  

The tri-services top bosses too had done some hard lobbying with the Defence Minister, who in turn had batted on behalf of the armed forces with the Finance Ministry.  

The government then set up a high-powered committee headed by Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar to look into the anomalies pointed out by different sections of the government servants, including those from the defence services.