Left Over Issues Of The Rank Pay Matter : Why Old Anomalies Remain Un-Addressed

Some of the contents of this blog post would be repetitions of what has been stated earlier. However, this blogger felt it relevant to revisit the issue in context of a rather disconcerting experience, a few days ago, while interacting with another blog (now closed-down by the parent Association) that seeks to represent concerns of ex-servicemen.

The issue was the widely recognized anomaly of how the Officers who were promoted on time-bound basis, as opposed to by selection, to rank of Lt Col during the period covered by IV CPC and also by V CPC (till 16 Dec 2004), received the rank pay of Major in-spite of having been given the rank and pay-scale of Lt Col. At that time, this had been based on the strange logic that because the Officers holding, what was called, the time-scale rank of Lt Col were accounted against establishment posts / vacancies of Major so were eligible to be paid rank-pay of Major and not Lt Col.

Everybody and his uncle is now aware, or would be unless they had put on intellectual blinkers that some in the ESM community have a particular liking for, that rank pay is identified by the rank and pay-scale. Rank, Rank-Pay and pay-scale form one integral whole. There are legal judgments on the subject. There was no sound basis at all for giving the rank pay of Major to an Officer who had been given the pay-scale of a Lt Col and substantive rank of Lt Col, whether on select or time-scale basis.

By definition, rank pay has nothing to do with the establishment post or vacancy filled. It has everything to do with the rank and it's corresponding pay-scale. The Government had issued a letter on the subject and can be read by clicking on this link.

The comment that I interacted with on the other blog chose to shrug off the matter by mis-representing some facts. The issue relates to the entire duration of V CPC upto 16 Dec 2004 and not just to IV CPC as the person making the comment sought to project. The monthly loss in rank pay to each Officer holding the time-scale rank of Lt Col was Rs.400/- pm from 01 Jan 96 excluding the DA element.

While being critical of the length of my previous post on the matter and attempting to provide a rather erroneous view in a patchy "gist", one of the prime-movers of the association related with that other blog, in fact served to underline why some important veteran issues never get correctly dealt with or represented.

A link to the interaction on the other blog is at the end of this blog-post. The most important aspect of that little interaction is the resulting realization that if people, ostensibly in the forefront of fighting for veteran causes, choose to take the defeatist stance of, "Its too late to do anything now", or, "We can offer nothing but our sympathy", and, worst of all, "The Govt felt it should be that way", then perhaps the affected persons should make a note of the lack of grasp of issues on the part of entities that ought to show greater awareness of veteran matters.

In such cases, affected individuals need to take a leaf out of Maj Dhanapalan's book and independently get matters scrutinized thoroughly for correction through legal means.

Let us not forget, the rank-pay 'shortfall' also resulted in a a lower fixation of pensions for all of the similarly affected Officers who retired between 01 Jan 1996 and 15 December 2004.

Also, this matter was originally part of RDOA's contempt petition as a recent Twitter conversation reminded this blogger. It was listed at sub-para (h)of their rejoinder. As such, this shortfall ought to have attracted payment of interest as the rest of the rank pay arrears did. It is not clear whether RDOA are at all going to follow up on this aspect as judgment of Hon'ble Supreme Court had left it to individuals to obtain correct fixation in respect of the Rank Pay contempt petition.

It can only be hoped this following table would be clear enough regarding the matter to anyone who feels challenged by text:

Shortfall In Payment To An Officer Given Rank Of Lt Col But Rank Pay Of Major (V CPC)
Difference Of Lt Col and Maj RP with DA	Period	Total Difference
400	01 Jan 96 To 30 Jun 96	2400
416	01 Jul 96  To 31 Dec 96	2496
432	01 Jan 97 To 30 Jun 97	2592
452	01 Jul 97  To 31 Dec 97	2712
464	01 Jan 98 To 30 Jun 98	2784
488	01 Jul 98  To 31 Dec 98	2928
528	01 Jan 99 To 30 Jun 99	3168
548	01 Jul 99  To 31 Dec 99	3288
552	01 Jan 00 To 30 Jun 00	3312
564	01 Jul 00  To 31 Dec 00	3384
572	01 Jan 01 To 30 Jun 01	3432
580	01 Jul 01  To 31 Dec 01	3480
596	01 Jan 02 To 30 Jun 02	3576
608	01 Jul 02  To 31 Dec 02	3648
620	01 Jan 03 To 30 Jun 03	3720
636	01 Jul 03  To 31 Dec 03	3816
644	01 Jan 04 To 31 Mar 04	1932
666	01 Apr 04 To 30 Jun 04	1998	Based on DP element of RP and DA on same
684	01 Jul 04 to 15 Dec 04 (Edit: Officers who continued to serve beyond this date would have got rank pay of Lt Col as the Lt Col(TS) rank was abolished from this date. But, Officers given the rank of Col(TS) at QS of 26 years, continued to get Rank Pay of Lt Col till 31 Dec 2005)	3762	Based on DP element of RP and DA on same
Total Shortfall To An Officer Given Rank Of Lt Col But RP Of Maj. The lower Rank Pay could have also affected Pay in 6 CPC as well as Pension.		58428*	*subject to validation. **Intt ought to have been payable in       addition just as it was on the RP arrears.

{The interaction on the "other blog" can no longer be viewed as the Association had closed it down}.

Short Changing The Non-Select (Up-dated)

There have been a number of references online as to how, during the period when provisions of IV CPC and V CPC were in force, armed forces officers, who had been overlooked for promotion to the select rank of Lt Col/Cdr/Wg Cdr, were denied the basic entitlement of the full rank pay of the ranks of Lt Col (and equivalent) on being given the corresponding Time-Scale ranks.

This subject has recently got attention in the context of the Rank Pay litigation. So, it would appear, these former colleagues, who had fallen afoul of the infamous promotional pyramid, and the sometimes less than rational rules and processes that define which officers would continue to stick onto the pyramid walls and which ones would plunge to career-doom, were further deprived of their dues even after losing seniority and picking up the payscale a couple of years after their peer-group. 

Judging from the amount of exposure the issue is now receiving on various blogs, it is indeed surprising why the matter was not taken up right when it arose. In fact, the role of services HQs relating to these issues is far from transparent. No matter how much blame gets heaped on the bureaucracy and the audit set-up, it is hard to understand how the whole rank-pay matter arose in the first place. Till date we have the rather unconvincing assertions of those who were at the helm, so to speak, to the effect that a very favourable fixation was obtained by them for officers of the armed forces at the time of IV CPC. We now know how far removed that view is from reality considering the manner in which all armed forces officers were deprived of what was their due and how litigation had to be resorted to obtain a resolution of the major issue.

But specific to the issue of rank pay applicable to TS ranks, one is even more puzzled as to why a simple issue was not resolved at the level of services HQs and Ministry of Defence right from the time of implementation of IV CPC. This blog post can merely link up various references to the matter so that this issue can receive attention, suggestions as well as discussion as to whether the matter needs to be taken up independently of the major on-going rank Pay litigation.

Chronologically, as rank pay was introduced by the Government at the time of implementation of recommendations of IV CPC, but independent of it, the confusion arose because probably the CPC OR the implementation authority needlessly arrogated to itself the authority to define what rank pay would apply to some one given the rank of Lt Col (and equivalent) on completion of the requisite length of service. At the most, IV CPC could have defined that officers holding the Lt Col (TS) rank would be accounted against Maj vacancies in the establishment.

If one really thinks clearly about it, perhaps even such a clarification from a pay commission, or in documents implementing the recommendations, was redundant and ought to have been left for the Government to define in other instructions and orders. To obtain further clarification, I had sought to raise the subject in a blog-post by RDOA by way of a comment. It also affected the time scale rank of Col for the period 16 Dec 2004 to 31 Dec 2005. But, at the time, I was wrong in assuming in the comment that a similar error would apply to Col(TS) post VI CPC. I understand now that it does not. A Col(TS) was given the same Grade Pay as a Col (select) with effect from 01 Jan 2006.

The error, or let's call it 'mischief', was further compounded at the time of V CPC which clearly laid down the different rank pays for 'Select' and 'Non-Select' ranks. This was inspite of the fact that a one-time grant of payscale of Lt Col was given to Officers who were given the Time-Scale rank. The fact that, by definition, rank-pay is integral to the pay-scale and the nomenclature of the corresponding rank was ignored on the basis of totally needless confusion created by flawed logic that because the time-scale officers were to be accounted against Maj vacancies they should get the rank pay of Maj. In other words, the non-select officers would be given the rank and the corresponding pay-scale but not the rank-pay defined by these two.

Blogs of Harmed Forces and RDOA had mentioned that the Govt. of India had reviewed the matter and "clarified" the definition of Rank Pay vide a letter dated 29 February 2000. But it remains unclear to this day whether any corrective action, representation or litigation exists in connection with this matter. It is surmised that the DGL on the total rank pay matter, issued by the services HQs, does rectify this anomaly, but that whole issue is now part of a contempt proceedings. It may not really hurt to share information whether there is a possibility to address this matter, independently of the contempt action, based on the Govt letter a link to which I had provided here.

{Edit}: Further reading on the subject on this Blog Post.