NEW DELHI: A frisson is running through the national capital’s security establishment with an official committee set to give its verdict later this month on parity in ranks between military officers and civilian employees of the central government.
Military personnel are apprehensive that officers of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force may be made equivalent to Group B government personnel rather than Group A. But there is a divide within the military. Last week, Army chief Bipin Rawat denied permission for a presentation that was to be made by his subordinates in South Block. The presentation would have made a case for equivalence with Group A services and for benefits to senior officers at par with what is drawn by secretaries of the Union government.
The presentation was to be made to the ‘Equivalence Committee’ which was set up last October. In an order dated October 18, 2016, the Ministry of Defence brought military officers serving at Armed Forces Headquarters down by a notch in comparison to the cadre of the Armed Forces Headquarters Civil Services (AFHQCS).
It equated a major-general (and the equivalent ranks of rear admiral and air vice-marshal in the Navy and Air Force respectively) with a principal director; a brigadier (commodore and air commodore) with a director; and a colonel (captain or group captain) with a joint director. The military insisted there was no equivalent in the civil services to a brigadier and that a lieutenant colonel (a rank junior to a colonel) had so far been equivalent to a director. When the government order was opposed by military personnel, the then defence minister Manohar Parrikar said he would sort out the discrepancy. Since then the defence portfolio has passed from Parrikar to Jaitley and now to Nirmala Sitharaman.
The issue has festered with cases being filed in the Armed Forces Tribunal -- which ruled last December that the military’s case was strong -- and in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has now scheduled a hearing of the matter on October 26 by when the Equivalence Committee is to give its report.
This three-member committee is chaired by additional secretary (defence production) Surina Rajan. Its other members are principal director in the Military Secretariat (X) Archana Rai and director-general of military operations (DGMO) Lt Gen A K Bhatt. There is anxiety at Armed Forces Headquarters, particularly over the DGMO’s signature on the committee’s report.
Forbidden by law to go public with their grievances, military personnel are speaking through veterans.
Last week, in a letter congratulating Nirmala Sitharaman on being appointed as defence minister, the chief spokesperson for the Indian Ex-Servicemen’s Movement, Maj. Gen. Satbir Singh (retd) wrote that a cabal of bureaucrats was deliberately discouraging the military.