‘Move SSC personnel to paramilitary and save Rs 7,800 cr’

The Pay Commission has recommended lateral movement of Short Service Commission officers and Personnel Below Officer...

The Pay Commission has recommended lateral movement of Short Service Commission officers and Personnel Below Officer Rank (PBOR) to paramilitary organisations like CRPF, BSF and Defence civilian organisations to provide these organisations with skilled manpower and save the exchequer Rs 7,800 crore over the next 13 years. The recommendation, that aims at catering to both the shortage of officers in the Armed Forces and demands for skilled personnel in Central police organisations, envisages that selected personnel will serve for seven years in the Armed Forces before being transferred to either the civilian setup in MoD or the paramilitary services.

The Pay Commission says while 40,000 Armed Forces personnel retire every year at a comparatively young age, the “total number of average annual vacancies in CPOs and the various cadres of defence civilians will be around 35,000”, thus making the move viable. In addition, the scheme will curtail the pension bill of the Government by a significant amount besides saving training costs for new recruits.

“It is estimated that the Government spends Rs 100 crore per annum on recruitment and training of personnel for CPOs and defence civilian organisations. This expenditure will be saved,” it says.

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According to the report, the move will result in a saving of Rs 700 crore every year and will solve MoD’s problems of resettling retired personnel. In order to facilitate the transition, the commission has recommended parity between various posts in the Defence Forces and civilian employees and suggested the new pay scales accordingly. Spelling out the method in which the arrangement will work, the report says all recruitments to the posts of Short Service Commissioned Officers and PBOR in the Defence Forces, CPOs and defence civilian organisations will be made with “the selected candidates serving initially in the Defence Forces for some time before being shifted to CPOs/ defence civilian organisations”.

The recruitments will be made by special boards of the Armed Forces. “On completion of the tenure in the Defence Forces, the personnel shall be laterally shifted to an analogous post either in any of the CPOs or in one of the Defence civilian organisations. The lateral shift to a specific CPO or a defence civilian organisation will depend on the availability of post and the choice and medical fitness of the Defence Forces personnel concerned,” the report says.