Army, Navy, IAF shoot down new pay hike

New Delhi: The seemingly generous Sixth Pay Commission hasn’t made everyone happy. Or richer either.

After B, C and D grade Government employees took to protests against the recommendations of the Panel, the three service chiefs have also expressed dissatisfaction with the salary hike proposed.

The services chiefs met Defence minister AK Antony on Thursday, protesting the “raw deal” given to them. They are also likely to petition the Government for better pay packages for officers and jawans.

The armed forces were expecting their salaries to be doubles and say the recommended hikes translate to just a 15-20 per cent jump.

Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor said cogent suggestions will be made to the Ministry for an improved raise.

The special military service pay – that recommends Rs 6,000 for officers and Rs 1,000 for jawans – has also angered them.

Such is the resentment among the armed forces that many jawans claimed that they were being offered ''just peanuts'' while some even went to the extent of saying the report ''need to be thrown in the dustbin''.

Speaking about the issue, the Defence Minister hinted at some

modification or re-look at the report.

However, he said the matter would be discussed with all the concerned. ''This is my reaction on the issue for today,'' Mr Antony remarked when asked about the resentment of the armed forces over the Pay Commission's recommendations vis-a-vis the personnel of the three services.

Speaking exclusively to CNN-IBN in February, Kapoor had expressed a hope that the Pay Commission would hike the salaries of armed forces personnel by more than 200 per cent.

Following are the excerpts of his interview with Karan Thapar:

Deepak Kapoor: The Sixth Pay commission is very much in the limelight, and we've had some very good interactions with them. Even the honourable Raksha Mantri (Defence Minister) has gone and met the Chairman of the Pay Commission, and they are quite positive, and we are hopeful that the recommendations should be positive towards the armed forces

Karan Thapar: But General Kapoor, you need not just a large salary increase to make the army pay scales competitive, you need perhaps 100 to 200 per cent increases to be able to compete with the commercial world.

Deepak Kapoor: I am in agreement with you, but that is what we are hoping will happen, lets see how it comes about finally. When we talk about the Fifth Pay Commission and comparison with that - perhaps it may well be 200 per cent or even more than that.

(With UNI inputs)

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