MoD denies downgrade, armed forces don’t agree

New Delhi: The Ministry of Defence on Thursday said there has been no “downgrading” of service officers in rank parity vis-a-vis civilian staff, this even as serving and retired officers said it was reiterating previous orders.

The MoD said: “The reiteration of rank equivalence is only for matters of assigning duties and functional responsibilities as is existing in different offices of the service headquarters of the Army, Navy and IAF having component of service personnel as well as civilian officers”. This has no bearing on civilian staff outside these offices.

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The forces opine there cannot be multiple parameters for ‘equivalence’ of ranks. With the MoD letter there will be a separate equivalence, one for ‘functionality’, another on ‘Warrant of Precedence’ (WoP). There has to be only one regime of equivalence, they say,  based on WoP and aligned with relative pay-scales. — TNS