Central  Pay Commission Versus Military Pay Committee

By

Shashank Bendre

The Central Government abolished the Institution of Military Pay Committee in 1973 starting with the 3^rd Central Pay Commission and then onwards entrusted the job of pay revision of military personnel also with that body only for the next four occasions. The 7^th CPC has made a mention of this fact in its report.

The subsequent CPC s then had to carry out the ridiculous exercise of trying to fit a soldier in a Safari Suit to see who looks more handsome; the bureaucrat or the soldier! Or like trying to judge whether the pen is mightier than the sword. 

In 2010 the then Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh had accepted the demand for a separate Pay Committee for the Armed Forces after much persuasion by the ESM organizations. Unfortunately, the three Service Headquarters, in their wisdom, did not accept this offer and preferred to go the CPC way! This gave Bureaucrats a handle to turn the recommendations of the CPCs in their favour.

I had warned the ESM then that this decision of the Service Head Quarters was unwise. But some ESM themselves had supported this move of the Service HQs. Their argument was that the CPC would score over the recommendations of MPC. To that I had countered that the MPC should sit only after the CPC to know what it had recommended.

Even the issue of OROP would have been better handled by the MPC once the Pay/perks/pensions of the Armed forces are delinked from those of the civilians. We are now suffering because of the unwise decision of rejecting the MPC.