Amidst a recent development, many senior IPS officers of the Haryana cadre breathed a sigh of relief after the home department guaranteed their promotion benefits with effect from January 1st of their promotion year. These officers were wrongly deprived financially, and also in terms of perks but the government of Haryana is yet to give a final nod to the proposal by the union government.
The contentious issue arose after several IPS officers availed of promotion benefits with effect from January 1st of their respective year of promotion instead of the actual date of promotion. While many other officers availed promotional benefits from the actual date of their promotion, this flagrant discrimination between the two sects of officers became a bone of contention.
The latest move aims to bring all IPS officers into the same bracket of promotional benefits. Mr. Y Puran Kumar (2001 batch IPS), an IGP rank officer, had been representing this issue before the Khattar government over the past two years.
Officer Kumar, the incumbent Inspector General of Police (IGP) (Telecommunications), had been promoted to the post of DIG on October 12th, 2015, “with immediate effect.” However, he had been seeking his promotion to the DIG rank with “retrospective effect” (January 1st, 2015). Hence, he approached the government with a plea for the readjustment of pay scales and arrears from January 1st, 2015, to date, augmented with interest as applicable. Officer Kumar strived to establish that the MHA guidelines were being applied in a way to grant “undue” financial benefits to some officers, while others faced financial losses.
While representing the matter, Officer Kumar stated, “The promotions for 1993, 1994 and 1995 batch officers were done with immediate effect, and the promotion of 1996 batch officers were made from backdate (January 1st of the respective year).” IGP Kumar presented his example to establish how his promotion to the rank of DIG took place on October 12th, 2015, with immediate effect, whereas the due date for the same promotion had been January 1st, 2015.
Recently, the officials of the state home department have examined the case and established that the revised pay scale after Officer Kumar’s promotion was effective from October 2015, while for the 2006 and 2007 batch IPS officers, their promotion to the rank of DIG was effective from January 1st of the year of their promotions. This matter was raised during a meeting chaired by Haryana Home Minister Anil Vij on November 7th, 2023.
