Finance minister P Chidambaram has piloted the creation of 26 new positions called Principal Chief Commissioners of Income Tax (PCCIT) in the 'apex scale.'
Orders expanding the numbers of top guns by a dramatic number beyond SCPC were issued on June 1. This followed a general approval to Chidambaram's plan by the Union Cabinet on May 23. (Please click for copy of the Order: http://www.staffcorner. com/view.htmlIJid=606001).
The 'apex scale' shall give these Indian Revenue Service (IRS) Officers the grade of Rs 80,000;so far reserved for full secretaries of the government of India, special secretaries, and heads of police and forest forces in the country, besides Members and Chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT).
The lock-stock-and-barrel upgrade of IRS officers to the 'apex scale' is unprecedented in the history of tax administration (Historically inclined readers can tap the link on the Central Board of Direct Taxes site: http://incometaxindia.gov.in/HISTORY/PRE-1922.ASP).
Concurrently, an entire bunch of 191 Chief Commissioners of Income Tax (CCIT) have been upgraded to a higher grade called 'HAG+'from the pay scale of additional secretary (called HAG or 'higher administrative grade,' drawing Rs67,000-79,000)
In HAG+, ie, Rs75,500-80,000, the new salary of these 191 folks,will be within kissing distance of the 'apex scale' of Rs 80,000.
With 26 new positions in 'apex scale,' adding six CBDT Members and the Chairman,and 191 in HAG+, the IRS will have, with one executive order, over 225 officers at the top of the government's hierarchical pyramid; a situation that shall challenge the very basis of traditional dominance ascribed to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).
Revenue Secretary Sumit Bose, an IAS officer, is the boss of the Chairman CBDT, as well as the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) and he too is in the 'apex scale'!
For context, only Chairman CBDT was in the 'apex scale' (pre-revised Rs 26,000 and now Rs 80,000) until the Six Central Pay Commission (SCPC) report came in. In the name of expanding career opportunities for non-IAS services, the SCPC upgraded CBDT Members too in the 'apex scale,' though only the Chairman came to be designated as an ex officio Special Secretary to the Government of India, reporting to the Revenue Secretary.
Those who were originally called CCIT now stand redesignated as Principal Commissioner of Income Tax (PCIT), a new nomenclature.
The total number of PCIT now approved is 300. These 300 PCITs will draw the HAG scale, Rs 67,000-Rs79,000, presently drawn by Additional Secretaries of the government of India.
So, if you are still not dizzy with the math, the total number of IRS folks benefitting from Chidambaram's largesse in 'apex scale,' HAG+, and HAG is a whopping 225+300=525.
No one in India Inc wants to grudge a taxman a faster climb to the Everest. But guess how that helps the politicianIJ Simply, it expands the zone of consideration for every top job like, say, Member (investigation) CBDT, or even Chairman, CBDT. In the new dispensation, there are 26 PCCITs and 6 Members who will be in the same grade and therefore even the junior-most among them, if he/she were the darling of a finance minister, can be seated as Chairman without any one having a case before the Central Administrative Tribunal for supersession! By rule, an officer only has the right to the scale that his immediate junior draws. The choice of which post to consign him/her to remains within exclusive jurisdiction of the executive.
In the hands of an ingenious FM, this can recreate the encore of what the country saw in the Railway Board where an officer called Mahesh Kumar is alleged to have bid Rs 10 crore via the nephew of the then Rail Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal only to become Member (Electrical).
The corresponding damage in this sort of flattening of the pyramid is that seniormost officers stop listening to each other. More often than not expect all those in the 'apex grade' to stop attending coordination meetings where an officer of lower year of allotment in the IRS shall convene summon them as Member/Chairman, CBDT.
The lesson in history has been that whenever the authority of the State goes down, designations of its revenue officials become longer and more pompous. RomilaThapar in her magisterial 'Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas' made this point to telling effect. Is the Union cabinet, seduced as it has been with Chidambaram's empire building, presiding over a similar fall in the bottomIJ
Expect other central services like posts, excise and customs, and several others to now demand similar upgrades to the 'apex scale.'
The core concept of 'apex scale' is that a Secretary, almost always from the IAS, or its pre-Independence predecessor, the Indian Civil Service, will be the numerouno of the ministry/department and the single-point advisor of the Government of India. With the June 1 order, the word Rsapex'shall connote a new meaning within the CBDT dictionary!
(The writer is CEO and Co-Founder, India Strategy Group, Hammurabi & Solomon Consulting llP. Twitter handle: @therohitbansal).