CPI general secretary AB Bardhan has questioned the very basis of the fifth pay commissions recommendations, saying that the panel had abandoned all norms for fixing pay. Senior bureaucrats are to get 53 per cent hikes while lower category employees are to get a mere 13 per cent, he points out, adding that different criteria were used to recommend hikes for different categories of employees. Consumption patterns were used as an index for assessing the requisite pay of senior employees while GDP growth was used for lower levels, he held.
He said the panelists went beyond their brief and were hijacked by the IAS lobby. The commission went much beyond their terms of reference. Who authorised them to recommend about number of railway zones, about the merger of Assam rifles with CRPF etc?
Meanwhile, according to a Press Trust of India report Bardhan yesterday said the economic policies of the Deve Gowda government are much the same as those of the past Congress regimes, but made it clear that the CPI will continue to raise questions about certain issues on which it does not see face-to-face with the government.
