BENGALURU: The constabulary and other Group-C police personnel in Karnataka have reason to celebrate as Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy on Tuesday approved a substantial hike, of up to 35 per cent, in their pay scales.
The move comes in the backdrop of the recommendations made by the Raghavendra Auradkar Committee in its September 2016 report.
The revised pay scale of the Group-C police personnel, which will be effective from August 1, is estimated to cost the state exchequer an additional Rs 600 crore annually.
“In view of the onerous duties and responsibilities attached to these cadres, the government has decided to revise the pay scales assigned to these posts in the police department as recommended by the Sixth Pay Commission,” stated a government order issued on Tuesday.
The state government on Tuesday issued an order hiking the pay scales for lower rung police personnel. “The Chief Minister’s approval of the hike and revision of pay scales of the constabulary and other Group-C staff is a major step towards improving the lot of the lower rung police personnel in Karnataka. They will now be on par with their counterparts in other government departments,” said a senior IPS officer, who did not want to be named.
The main recommendations of the Auradkar Committee were to improve the pay and allowances of the Group-C police personnel comprising constables (PCs), head constables (HCs) and assistant sub-inspectors (ASIs) in the state and bring them on par with their colleagues in other departments of the state government, who have same qualification or eligibility for entry to the post. There are 80,000 Group-C police personnel in the one-lakh-strong police force in the state.
The committee headed by Auradkar was set up after the threat of attempted mass leave by constables across the state on June 4, 2016, in protest against poor pay, working conditions and alleged harassment by seniors.
The then chief minister Siddaramaiah had constituted the committee comprising of ADGPs Kamal Pant and Pratap Reddy and IGPs Umesh Kumar and Hemant Nimbalkar to look into the grievances of the constables and suggest recommendations to improve their lot.
The officers had made a comparative analysis of the pay scales of policemen in Karnataka Punjab, Kerala, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal and had stated that the Karnataka police were in the eighth slot in terms of salary. The committee had recommended that “correcting of pay anomalies and allowance shortfalls (to the police personnel) could be useful.”
In his Budget announcement in February, Kumaraswamy had raised the risk allowance for constables from Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 per month, which was also recommended by the committee but had deferred the hike in their pay and allowances, reportedly due to financial constraints.
Constables are the backbone of the police force and have to work for very long hours, often without a break because of multiple duties and shortage of manpower.
“Post and grade-wise, they are equivalent to a second division assistant (SDA) in other government departments. While an SDA gets promoted to the post of first division assistant (FDA) in 10-12 years of service, a constable often spends three-fourths of his career in the post and gets promoted as head constable after anywhere between 15 and 25 years of service. The disparity does not end here. An SDA, on promotion as FDA, gets a jump of three pay scales, whereas a constable, towards the end of his career, gets a single promotion as HC and one pay scale hike,” the officer added.