Government rejects Army’s proposal for higher perk

The hierarchy in the Forces is divided into officers, JCOs and other ranks. It takes 15 years for a jawan to become a JCO.

NEW DELHI:  The finance ministry on Tuesday rejected the proposal seeking higher Military Service Pay (MSP) for Junior Commissioned Officers (JCO), dashing the hopes of over one lakh military personnel. 
MSP was introduced as a means to compensate the hardships and disadvantages faced by soldiers. Currently, there are two slabs for MSP — `15,500 a month for officers and `5,200 for JCOs and jawans. The proposal was to allow a separate band of MSP for JCOs, raising it to `10,000. If accepted, this would have cost the ex-chequer `610 crore. 

The hierarchy in the Forces is divided into officers, JCOs and other ranks. It takes 15 years for a jawan to become a JCO. In an infantry battalion of about 800 officers and men, there are 40 JCOs. Lt-Gen 
Vinod Bhatia, former DG Military Operations, says, “JCOs are the leaders on the ground... This important lot has been clubbed with the jawans while on ground we expect them to function somewhere between the officers and the jawans.”

Over one lakh JCOs across three Forces
There are about 87,000 JCOs in the Army, 8,000 in the Navy and 17,000 in the Air Force. While the Ministry of Defence was in consonance with the demand of the three services, the finance ministry did not find merit in the demand

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