Before roll out of Seventh Central Pay Commission, 20 civil services seek fair representation

Before roll out of Seventh Central Pay Commission, 20 civil services seek fair representation

A total of 20 civil services, excluding the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), have petitioned the cabinet secretary and the expenditure secretary, asking a fair representation on the empowered committee, which will decide on the benefits (suggested by the seventh pay commission) to all civil services.

“We have seen media reports that a majority of the members in the empowered committee of secretaries shall be from a single service. If the cabinet has taken or takes such a decision, we shall respect and honour the same. However, we have no confirmation whether our memorandum was placed before the cabinet for consideration,” Jayant Misra, convenor of Confederation of Civil Service Associations, said.

“We are still awaiting an opportunity to meet the cabinet secretary, to re-iterate our demand that equitable representation be given to various services in all the bodies or committees so that there is no domination by any particular service,” he added.

The association had submitted a fresh memorandum to cabinet secretary P K  Sinha and expenditure secretary Ratan P Watal on Tuesday.

The 20 civil services, however, are sceptical that their demand of equal representation will be met and their officers brought on a par with the IAS and the IFS officers.

They say that despite the prime minister office’s directions for reducing the gap in the empanelment to the joint secretary level by December, nothing substantial has taken place.

All the civil services officers usually start at the same pay scale — the IAS and IFS officers get two additional increments when they are moved from junior time scale to senior time scale after four years.

Then, four additional increments are given for IAS and IFS at the next two scales.

 

“There is no justification for these additional increments to IAS and IFS officers. Because of this we lose out on seniority,” Misra said.

He says this has delayed empanelment of Indian Police Service (IPS), Indian Revenue Service (IRS), Customs and Excise officers as joint secretaries.

Recently the officers who were empanelled for the post of joint secretary were from the 1997 batch of IAS cadre, 1993 batch of IPS cadre, 1989 batch of IRS cadre, 1990 batch of Indian Forest Service and the 1993 batch of the Indian Postal Service.

Source: Business Standard