Armed forces, civil servants and paramilitary staff will get to rejoice this Independence Day with the administration ready to approve the Sixth Pay Commission Report that was postponed in the Parliament earlier this year, but not implemented up till now.

A high level conference on Wednesday (August 13) led by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh discussed the pay panel details and the suggestions of the empowered group of Secretaries that went into the anomalies and other matters.

The meeting was also attended by the External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Defence Minister AK Antony and Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram.

According to official sources, “The Cabinet is likely to take up the sixth pay panel report for approval tomorrow and the matter was discussed at a meeting chaired by the PM today.”

Though the sources denied to share other details of the conference or the modification to the pay commission report, the addition over the commission’s proposals would result in an increase of 1.83 times of the net pay for the armed forces staff and a considerable increase for civil servants also.

The pay commission, submitted by Justice B N Srikrishna on March 24, had originally advocated that the pay for the defence forces be hiked up by 1.74 times, computed on the basis of the inflationary factors.

Showing anger over the pay commission report, armed forces staff called for a better deal considering the adversity factor involved in their services, followed by protest rallies by retired personnel.

The tri-services chiefs also lobbied with the Defence Minister.

The Government then set up a dynamic group led by Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar to investigate the anomalies signalized by various sections of the government servants, including those from the defence services.