Group A officers of paramilitary forces must get pay upgrade: Delhi HC

The Sixth Pay Commission report recommendations included the provision that since upgrade of designation and promotions were not possible due to shortage of vacancies, Group A officers would get NFU in pay scales. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had, however, denied the benefit by claiming the BSF and other forces were “a General Central Service’ and not an “organised service”.

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The judgment will benefit more than 11,000 Group A officers of BSF, CISF, CRPF, ITBP and SSB.

The bench of Justice Kailash Gambhir and Justice Najmi Waziri granted relief to the Group A officers, who had approached court in a batch of petitions filed in 2012 and 2013. Nearly 300 officers were party to the batch of seven separate pleas filed before the bench.

“As recent as the second administrative reform list on 11 February 2015 relied upon by the government, the petitioners in central forces have been categorised as ‘organised forces’. Therefore, benefits ought to be granted to them,” the court held.

The paramilitary officers had challenged the MHA decision of 2011 and office memorandum issued by the ministry in October 2013 that had denied the benefits of pay scale revision under the NFU policy to the CAPF
personnel.

The officers had argued the CAPF had “all the attributes of an organised service” and there was already “acute stagnation in the cadre of group A officers”, which was “affecting the morale and efficiency of the officers”.