Pay stand is about status, equality, says Naval chief

Amid reports that the three defence service chiefs have been ticked off for their unprecedented defiance over the Pay Commission report, Navy Chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta today gave a new twist to the controversy by suggesting that the issue involved the command and control relationship between the armed forces’ officers and their civilian counterparts.

Mehta, chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, told reporters here that the issue was not money but status and equality. The money aspect had been overplayed by the media, he said.

“It is about status and equivalence that existed (before the Pay Commission) and the command and control relationship (between the armed forces officers and their civilian counterparts),” he said, days after the three service chiefs refused to implement the Pay Commission report unless the “anomalies” were rectified.

The admiral made these remarks at a Territorial Army day parade where Defence Minister AK Antony, Army Chief Gen Deepak Kapoor and Air Chief FH Major were present. The other two service chiefs were walking alongside Mehta when the reporters talked to him but did not comments.

Antony, who is reported to have conveyed the government’s unhappiness to the service chiefs over their stand, took the salute at the parade and left immediately thereafter, skipping the customary tea with the officers present.

“How it (status, equality, command and control structure) has been disturbed (by the Pay Commission report), nobody knows,” Mehta said when asked about the issues raised during the meeting of the service chiefs with External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee yesterday.

Mukherjee heads a three-member ministerial committee set up by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to look into the grievances of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force related to the Pay Commission.

“It was a fact-finding mission. We had a long chat with the minister over the issues,” he said.

After the government approved the Pay Commission report in August this year, the armed forces refused to implement it claiming it was discriminatory.

At the behest of the defence minister, the three chiefs agreed to implement the revised pay scales “temporarily”.

The government also announced that the defence personnel would be paid an ad-hoc amount of 40 per cent arrears under the Pay Commission, which came into retrospective effect from January 1, 2006. Due to the delay in calculating their revised pay, the defence personnel would get the new pay scales from November.