Capt Amarinder joins veterans in march to Raj Bhawan against pay anomalies

Punjab Congress president Capt Amarinder Singh on Thursday joined the veterans’ march to governor VP Singh Badnore and submitted a memorandum supporting the stand taken by the three services chiefs against the bias towards defence services in the Seventh Pay Commission.
The veterans included Lt Gen SS Brar, Lt Gen Jasbir Singh Dhaliwal besides major generals, brigadiers, colonels, junior commissioned officers and soldiers. The memorandum addressed to the President Pranab Mukherjee, who is also the supreme commander of the armed forces, said, “The community of veterans across the country fully endorses the stand taken by the chiefs of the army, navy and air force with regard to the recommendations of the seventh central pay commission.”
“However, the Indian armed forces trusted their civilian brothers and opted to be subject of a common pay commission. But the trust so posed was shattered by gumption of bureaucrats who insinuated two formulae for working out the pay scale of armed forces vis-à-vis civilian employees, placing the former to disadvantageous positions,” the memorandum said.
The ex-servicemen said that in the officer’s pay scale recommended by the fourth pay commission, at the time of its implementation, the government foisted provisions that fudged and diluted the pay scale to such an extent that the rank pay supposed to be paid over and above the recommended scale, was in fact included in the integrated pay scale, virtually depriving officers of their rank pay.
“Are soldiers less patriotic than bureaucrats or are they second rate citizens in their own country? This deserves serious consideration,” said Col MS Bajwa (retd).