In a bid to end the ongoing controversy over equivalence between armed forces personnel and their civilian counterparts in the Armed Forces Headquarters (AFHQ), the Defence Ministry has issued a fresh clarification.
The Ministry has directed that effective July 30, military personnel and civilian counterparts working together in the service headquarters will revert to their earlier cadre designations.
In a letter dated July 27 issued by the Director, HR, in the chief administrative office dealing with recruitment and provisioning of civilians, the Defence Ministry said, “…it is hereby directed that with effect from July 30, 2018, the officers of AFHQ CS of the grade of Director and Joint Director shall use cadre designations of Director and Joint Director respectively when posted in Service HRs and ISOs.”
In January this year, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had cancelled a letter from 2016 which created the controversy in functional equivalence, and directed that “local designations assigned to both service officers and civilian officers in Service HQs is hereby withdrawn. Both service and civilian officers will use their respective cadre designations only.”
However, the AFHQ cadre which had created new functional designations did not go back to the previous ones.
They insisted that this rule should be applicable to Major-Generals as well, but defence officials said Major-Generals were never within this ambit. This concerns ranks from Major to Brigadier and the AFHQ cadre’s demand is contrary to the orders of the Minister, an official said.
