Deposing before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, General Bipin Rawat said he has been meeting jawans who were asking why this gap was not being narrowed.
New Delhi: Army officers drawing “exceptionally high” disability pension shouldn’t mind paying “a little amount of income tax”, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat has suggested. Deposing before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, the military advisor to the country’s defence minister also said that there was a “wide variation” in the disability pensions of army jawans and officers and that it was “creating heartburn”, which “is not being understood by officers”.
The report of the parliamentary committee, headed by BJP MP Jual Oram, was tabled in Parliament on 13 March. In its report, the committee has asked the Modi government to present a “factual position” and its “clear decision” on the deduction of income tax from disability pensions and communicate it to army personnel, both serving and retired, by 13 April.
This came after top military brass and defence ministry officials, in their depositions to the committee, sought to defend the government’s controversial move to tax disability pensions in June last year. The government backed off early this month but there are still apprehensions about it, as the parliamentary committee flagged in its report.
Apprising the committee of the “wide variation” in the disability pensions of army jawans and officers, General Rawat said he has been meeting jawans who were asking why this gap was not being narrowed.
“So, one of the ways of narrowing this gap is this. Those who are drawing exceptionally high pensions, can they not pay a little amount of income tax? It is not applicable to a jawan because in spite of his disability pension being given to him, he is not coming into the tax bracket of ₹ 5 lakh as per the new tax regime,” the CDS has said in his deposition to the committee.
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The pension gap
According to the report of the standing committee, Rawat gave a detailed presentation on the background of the disability pension that is given for battle casualties and also for lifestyle diseases or other issues. It was started during the British regime.
By 1971, there were 157 ‘battle casualty’ pensions. It was revised in 1985 and 1996. After the Sixth Pay Commission, the disability pension became a part of the retiring salary — that is, the last salary drawn at the time of retirement. So, Rawat explained, if the disability is suffered by an officer and also by a jawan, because of the disability becoming a part of the last pay drawn, there is a very wide variation in their pensions for the same disability. For instance, if an officer’s leg and that of a jawan had to be amputated, the difference in their pensions could be as high as “four times”.
In June 2019, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) had clarified in a circular that tax exemption for disability pension would be available only to armed forces personnel “who have been invalidated from service on account of bodily disability attributable to or aggravated by such service and not to personnel who have been retired on superannuation or otherwise”. It triggered a controversy, forcing the government to shelve it early this month.
The parliamentary committee noted in its report that the defence ministry had directed the Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (PCDA) to stop deducting income tax from disability pensions. “They (the committee), therefore, recommend that the factual position in this regard may be intimated within one month of the presentation of this report and clear decision of the government in this regard should be communicated to all personnel, serving and retired, to obviate any chances of misapprehensions and feeling of soreness amongst them, under intimation to the Committee,” the report reads.
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