Army officer who filed plea seeking NFU gets threat calls

Ajay Banerjee
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, March 17

The issue of granting non-functional upgradation (NFU) to armed forces has taken an ugly turn. A serving Army officer, who had filed a plea seeking NFU, was allegedly threatened over the phone.

The officer, Col Mukul Dev, today tweeted: “Threatening calls are being made to me from ‘unknown’ number asking me not to follow what I am doing. Whosoever is making calls, I challenge, if you have guts, come in open and have a face-to-face bout. Why hide?” The Punjab Police (the officer is posted in Punjab) have responded by saying, “Please note action has already been initiated in this regard.”

The NFU is a financial upgrade given to all group “A” employees after a certain length of service. The Armed forces are not classified as group “A” hence they do not get it. The Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) had ruled in favour of the forces, the matter was challenged by the government in Supreme Court where the judgement is reserved.

Already retired soldiers and their families have been using social media to post pictures of bunkers along the India-Pakistan boundary or the India-China frontier to sarcastically refer to them as “palatial houses”. This comes after the Ministry of Defence submitted its reply in the SC arguing that armed forces should not be given the NFU and provided a long list of facilities, prerequisites and amenities that are not available to civil services.

Today, former Army Chief VP Malik (retd) tweeted: “It would be unjust to deny NFU to the armed forces when all other Central Government services have been given this benefit.”

Major DP Singh (retd), a war wounded soldier, took a dig at the “amenities” and tweeted a picture of stone and mud bunker. “This was my palatial bungalow while I was deployed on the LoC,” he said. Another veteran Beant Singh Sandhu wrote: “Relaxing on top of my palatial mud and rocks Bungalow.” Another Colonel has put a picture of his bunker at Siachen glacier.

Veterans have pointed out that there is actually a huge housing shortage.

The MoD has argued in the court that granting NFU was a policy matter and judicial review cannot lead to policy making. It said any policy applied to Group ‘A’ services cannot be applied to the forces. “Defence forces are rank-based organisations and the promotions are purely merit-based and the supersession is the norm, therefore grant of NFU to the forces would have an impact on efficiency and command.”