Army Commander raises  salary issues with PCDA

PUNE: Lieutenant General SK Saini, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Southern Command, on Wednesday drew the attention of RK Arora, who took over as Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (Officers) (PCDA) on February 11, on various issues regarding the pay and allowances of service officers. 

On assuming his new appointment, Arora visited Headquarters, Southern Command and interacted with the Army Commander. 

“During the interaction, the Army Commander drew the attention of Mr Arora to various issues regarding the pay and allowances of the service officers like admission of Leave Travel Concession (LTC) claims for journeys whenever a new home town was selected by the service personnel, inclusion of Military Service Pay as part of basic pay for the purpose of computing the amount of leave encashment on retirement, pay fixation anomalies of the serving officers especially Lieutenant Colonels and exemption of ration money allowance from Income Tax,” stated a release from Southern Command. 

The Army Commander also brought to the notice of PCDA (O) some long pending issues such as clarification on Date of Next Increment (DNI) for the officers, interpretation of Junior Officer for stepping up of pay and implementation of bunching of stages in 7th CPC for Army officers as done for Air Force. Lt Gen Saini addressed the issues concerning the veterans/ officers who were about to superannuate like Notional fixation of pension of Pre-January 2016 pensioners and timely release of closing credit balance in respect of officers who are retiring from service.

The Army Commander also brought out that there is a lot of scope in simplification of procedures for pre-audit of claims and requested Arora to identify such areas. He suggested digitisation of pay-related documents especially old and archival records for ease of accessibility by the officers. He suggested that interaction of officers with Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (Officers) staff be encouraged for resolving issues and emphasised the need to speed up the clearance of claims of serving officers and final claims of officers proceeding on retirement.