Rubbishing reports that he was censured by Defence Minister A K Antony for his 'defiance' over the Pay Commission report, Navy chief Sureesh Mehta said on Monday he expected the ministerial committee looking into the 'core issues' raised by the armed forces to give its recommendations within a fortnight.
Mehta also iterated that the defence personnel's grievances over the 6th Pay Commission report were 'not about money,' but about status equivalence and command and control issues.
He said the issues 'missed out' were 'oversights' and nobody 'could have done it wilfully'.
"I should think that we will have a final answer within about two weeks time or so," Mehta told reporters here while replying to a question on when the committee headed by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee was expected to submit its report.
"But they (the Mukherjee committee) are in the process of finding out what are the issues involved. And I'm sure they will take the right decision pretty quickly," he said.
Asserting that the issues were about 'status equivalence', the Navy chief said: "I said so the other day and I will say it again. The issue over here is not about money.
"The issue here is that there is a certain status equivalence -- there are certain functional requirement (while) working at particular levels."
Pointing out that problem arose in the field areas, where paramilitary and forces were working together, he said: "If there is a command and control problem, there is a big issue there. And that is what is happening in the control rooms. You know that in the North East and Jammu and Kashmir we have got these kinds of set ups."
Mehta said the core issues raised by the armed forces on the pay commission report were 'oversights'.
"That is what we are trying to bring about -- that these are oversights. I am quite certain that nobody could have done this wilfully. For some reasons these have been missed out and we are sure something will come about," he said.
Peeved over a report in a newspaper that he was pulled up by Antony for the third time on the pay issue, the Navy chief said: "I think (the media) is quoting things, which never happened, and bringing out issues, which have no substantiation at all."
Asked if the services chiefs had met Antony over the pay issues, Mehta said they met the Defence Minister and spoke to him 'very regularly.'
To another question on their possibility of discussing the pay issues with Mukherjee in the near future, the Navy chief said he was ready to meet the Minister whenever he was called.
The armed forces have been requesting the government to resolve the four issues regarding placing Lieutenant Colonels in Pay Band-4, parity in Grade Pay of officers from Captain to Brigadier with their civilian counterparts, restoration of pension benefits to jawans and placing Lieutenant Generals in Higher Administrative Grade Plus pay scales.
After the government implemented the 6th Pay Commission report in late August, the services headquarters were reluctant to implement the revised salaries and sought immediate intervention of the top political leadership to eliminate the alleged 'discriminatory' provisions.
As the issue snowballed into a major controversy, Antony talked tough with the chiefs and got them around to accept the pay commission report 'temporarily.'
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh set up a three-member ministerial committee under Mukherjee with Antony and Finance Minister P Chidambaram as members to look into the defence personnel's grievances.
The government also announced it would release ad-hoc amount of the 40 per cent arrears it had promised this year, as the armed forces had delayed submitting their revised pay vouchers to the Defence Ministry.
The 1.5 million personnel from the Army, Navy, and Air Force would get their revised salaries under the 6th Pay Commission in November this year, whereas their 3.5 million civilian counterparts took home their new pay packets this month.
