7th pay commission draft report

by Mentors4ias · November 20, 2015

The report of the Pay Commission, headed by Ashok Kumar Mathur, a former judge of the Supreme Court, was held up due to Bihar Assembly polls. The commission was given a four-month extension in August.

Pay Commissions are set up every 10 years by the central government to revise the pay and allowances of central government employees.
It recommends for an average 15-16 per cent increase in pay, allowances and pensions for Central government employees, lower than the 20 per cent suggested by the Sixth Pay Commission on the basis of which the then government revised the pay scales by nearly 40 per cent with effect from 2006.
The less generous recommendation reflects that the economy isn’t booming now as it was then
The report has got riddled with several dissent notes. There are dissension notes mainly about bringing in parity between the top-ranked Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the specialised central services

The chairman has recommended that the current practice — in which the pays of all officers recruited in a particular year are upgraded within two years of the first officer of the batch getting promotion — be extended to all services, including defence and central paramilitary services. The dissenting member, however, has suggested that the government get rid of this rule so that pay upgrade for officers, including IAS and IFS, should come off only after they themselves get promoted rather than within two years of the promotion of the first officer of their batch. Another dissenting member has recommended status quo.
On the empanelment of officers above the level of joint secretary for deputation to the Centre, the chairman and a member have recommended that officers of non-IAS and non-IFS services of a batch be considered. But the dissenting member suggested maintaining status quo.
The commission has also recommended substantial rises in the HRA to officers in lieu of government accommodation.
The commission will also submit a recommendation on an alternative approach to the one rank one pension for defence personnel.

The cost of the recommendations, if accepted by the Centre, works out to 0.6% of the GDP in the first year of implementation, lower than that of the Sixth Pay Commission, which was 0.77%.
In nominal terms, the rise is more than Rs. 1 lakh crore against the nearly Rs.18,000 crore following the Sixth Pay Commission’s award, which also resulted in additional arrears of Rs.30,000 crore. The per month ‘cost to company’ for the Centre will rise to Rs.4 lakh crore.
However, as percentage of the revenue expenditure, the cost is put at 18.5 per cent of the estimate in the budget for the current year. It was 22.3 per cent for the first year of the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission.

The notes reflect the sharp differences that have come up among the different cadres of government services about their pay and promotion avenues.
There is a larger issue here. All the services taken together make up fewer than 150,000 people within the central government tasked with a mammoth level of administrative responsibility for a country of 1.3 billion people. So, frustrations among them could have far-reaching repercussions.
At the heart of the difference is a two-year increment offered to IAS officers when they join vis-a-vis other cadres. Since seniority within the government is decided on pay scale, the higher start assures these officers of a higher position at each grade.
But as the IRS officers and others in their representations have pointed out, this makes it impossible for them to compete for additional secretary and secretary posts in the ministries.
To correct some of the problems, the 2010 report had suggested setting up of a Central Civil Services Authority for officers from all the services after they completed 13 years of service.
Each officer would get to choose an area of specialisation for the rest of their career. It has not been implemented so far.

The bureaucrats operate in a rigidly differentiated world through an appointment system that places them in cadres.
The top-most cadres are the all-India services that include the IAS, Indian Police Service and Indian Forest Service. Of them, the IAS are the most numerous, at 4,572 according to the Civil Survey Report of 2010, written by former cabinet secretary, K M Chandrasekhar.
Below them are about 45 cadres clubbed as central civil services, which include the IFS, IA&AS and IRS.
The impact of this pecking order came out in the open recently in the list of empanelled officers for the post of 60 additional secretaries. Of those empanelled, only three (railways, income tax and audit & accounts services) were from the non-all India services.