A LETTER TO THE RM 
FROM A SOLDIER'S WIFE

25 Years On, Air Force Memorialises Death of 28 in IAF Plane Crash By Kiran Parashar K M

 

Published: 25th March 2016 06:03 AM  Last Updated: 25th March 2016 06:09 AM

 

On March 25, 1991, around 8 am, a group of young and enthusiastic Indian Air Force technical trainees were eagerly waiting for their first travel experience in a Defence aircraft. But what happened next turned out to be one of the most tragic episodes in the country’s defence memoirs. The plane crashed, leaving 25 trainees and three crew members dead, minutes after take-off.

Exactly 25 years later, families of the deceased are planning to meet in Bengaluru to commemorate the youngsters. The youths had just passed out of Air Force Technical College, Jalahalli.

The incident still haunts the air force officials who witnessed it. One of them is retired flight lieutenant Sajan Zacharias.

“We had finished 21 days of training and were eagerly waiting to travel in Avro HS 748. Most of us were boarding an aircraft for the first time,” Zacharias said.

“Around 70 promising technical trainees, aged between 22 and 24, all engineering graduates, reached Yelahanka Air Force station early in the morning. It was a part of their curriculum to travel in an air force vehicle. A senior official divided us into four to five groups and the first team boarded Avro HS 748. The others remained near the air traffic control room. Minutes after the flight took off, it crashed. It took some time to identify the flight. We were waiting anxiously and then came the confirmation that the flight which crashed was that carrying the trainee staff. We were shocked and did not know how to respond to the situation,” he said.

“Soon, a senior official came and asked us to call our parents and inform them that we are safe.

“The team was yet to come out of the shock after the incident. A few days later, there were many senior officials from Defence who came to us and gave motivational speeches. They said we have to move forward after we lose our loved ones.”

‘We Look At March 25 As The Day We Were Reborn’

Every year on March 25, I look at the day as the one I was reborn and ask myself what have I contributed to the country in this second life. It could have been any of us that day. I feel, we should never take life for granted,” said retired flight lieutenant Sajan Zacharias, who now trains people from various sectors about life skills.

The Man Who Carried the Coffins

Retired Wing Commander A K Das, who was a 22-year-old engineering graduate then, was also among those who was at the accident spot on the fateful day.

“Twenty-five years after the incident, we still remember those people who passed away in the crash,” he said.

Recalling the aftermath of the incident, Das said, “On March 28, I was among the trainees who carried the coffins to Wilson Garden crematorium. The people I had met only a few days ago were now in coffins I was carrying. It was a shocker. However, being in defence, one has to be positive enough to handle such a situation.”

“I was also asked to coordinate with the family members of the deceased who rushed to Bengaluru the very next day. They had many questions for us. They were in shock and were heartbroken. Though we were still recovering from the shock, we took care of the victims’ families.”

Father Sets up Memorial for Son

Pilot Officer Vikram Chowhan’s father Colonel M P S Chowhan set up a school in his son’s name — Vikram Bal Vidya Mandir — near his ancestral village in Uttar Pradesh.

The school has at least 1,000 students from nearby villages and has been donated to the Uttar Pradesh government for its functioning.

Col Chowhan passed away in 2013.

avro hs 748 air tragedy march 25, 1991

Twenty-five years after a plane crash at Yelahanka Air Force Station left 25 IAF technical trainees and three crew members dead, families of the deceased plan to commemorate their loved ones in Bengaluru

An Indian Air Force Avro aircraft crashes at the Yelahanka Air Force Station on March 25, 1991, killing 28

Those killed include crew members and cadet technical officers of Air Force Technical College, Jalahalli

Soon after take-off, pilot reports a technical snag. the plane touches down the airfield’s rocky terrain

Fire tenders put off the flames within 15 minutes of the crash but find only the charred remains of the victims

8.15 am crash-land

Following technical snag, the pilot tries to forcefully land, causing the plane to go up in flames

The AVRO that Crashed

The Indian Air Force AVRO HS-748 was manufactured under licence by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd at Kanpur in the mid-sixties. It was among the first batch of AVROs handed over to the Air Force for transport duties.

The AVRO that Crashed

The Indian Air Force AVRO HS-748 was manufactured under licence by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd at Kanpur in the mid-sixties. It was among the first batch of AVROs handed over to the Air Force for transport duties.

What is AVRO 748?

The plane was being used by the VVIP communication squadron of the Indian Air Force for VIP movement. The AVROs were also used as passenger planes by Vayudoot — a regional airline which was a joint-venture between Indian Airlines and Air India.

First & The Last Ride

• There were around 70 technical trainees (aged between 22 and 25 years) at the Yelahanka Air Force Station.
• It was a part of their
• curriculum to trhttp://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/bengaluru/25-Years-On-Air-Force-Memorialises-Death-of-28-in-IAF-Plane-Crash/2016/03/25/article3344784.eceavel in an air force vehicle.
• The trainees underwent routine medical check-up.
• They were then divided into four to five groups and the first team boarded Avro HS 748. The others waited near the air traffic control room.
• Minutes after the flight took off, probably 160 feet above ground, the plane crashed

 

http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/bengaluru/25-Years-On-Air-Force-Memorialises-Death-of-28-in-IAF-Plane-Crash/2016/03/25/article3344784.ece

Too Many Public Complaints – Move Faster – Says Modi

Through several websites and online for a, the Prime Minister’s Office has been collecting a high volume of complaints

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has warned top bureaucrats that within a month, they need to prove that public complaints about poor services are being promptly addressed and then resolved.

The Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi has said all cases must be closed within 60 days of the complaint being registered without fail.

His comments were made at a session on Wednesday of when he addressed officers, some of them via videoconference. The meeting was called to review the progress being made under PRAGATI – an acronym for a web-based platform that collects complaints, and then tracks their progress through government departments.

Through several websites and online for a, the Prime Minister’s Office has been collecting a high volume of complaints about hardship to the public because of delays in acknowledging and processing complaints about government departments.

The PM stressed that efficient handling of complaints is a key component of his “minimum government, maximum governance” focus.

The PM called for a comprehensive district-wise check across the country to check on how many citizen-centric services are electronically offered.

He also reviewed the progress of vital infrastructure projects in the road, railway, power, and oil sectors spread over several states including Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.

He also asked officials to work urgently on integrating land records online with Aadhar – the world’s largest biometric database which has registered the fingerprints and iris signatures of nearly a billion Indians in an effort to streamline the payment of benefits and end the siphoning of subsidies meant for the under-privileged.

Source: NDTV

.........
Col Lamba ( one man army )

Military seethes at 7th Pay Commission Suggestions - Col Ranbir Lamba

Military seethes at 7th Pay Commission Suggestions – The military chiefs have argued strongly before the “Empowered Committee” that the military – which they term “the instrument of last resort” – does not have the option of “handing over an adverse situation to any other government agency”.

The 7th Pay Commission recommendations, have aroused bitter resentment within the military. 

On March 11, the three service chiefs made a presentation to the “Empowered Committee of Secretaries”, a 13-member panel headed by the cabinet secretary, which is looking into the recommendations.

The army, navy and air force are waiting to see if this panel will tone down clauses that former army chief VP Malik has termed “a killer for the military.”

This impression is rampant amongst soldiers, sailors and airmen, even though the 7th Pay Commission has raised baseline military salaries by about 15 per cent, taking the pay of a lieutenant (the entry grade for officers) to Rs 56,100 per month; and that of a sepoy (the entry grade for ratings) to Rs 21,700 per month. This is significantly lower than the 40 per cent increases handed out by the Fifth and Sixth Pay Commissions. One of the Seventh Pay Commission members, Rathin Roy, underlining the imperative to curb government spending, has admitted unapologetically: “We are the stingiest pay commission, ever.”
In addition to pay, soldiers get a special allowance called “military service pay”, which exists in most militaries in forms such as the British army’s “X-Factor Pay”. The Seventh Pay Commission raises it for officers from Rs 6,000 to Rs 15,500 per month; and for persons below officer rank from Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,200 per month.
In addition, soldiers get a “risk and hardship allowance”, based on the profile allocated to every military station. The highest grade on the matrix is Rs 25,000 per month, but serving on the Siachen Glacier and Antarctica entitles a soldier to a special grade of Rs 31,500 per month.
Totting up these allowances, the 7th Pay Commission chairman, Justice Ashok Kumar Mathur, in an interview to The Economic Times on December 20, claimed he had recommended 30 per cent higher salaries for the military than civilian services would draw.
His logic was based on the dubious premise that military service pay constitutes a component of salary. In western military salary structures, such allowances are not salary, but compensation for the “intangible hardships” of military service. These include long separation from families, wives being unable to work, and children changing schools frequently and growing up without their father, et cetera.
During its deliberations, the 7th Pay Commission asked the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses to compare military salaries in India with those of major foreign armed forces. While the IDSA study was relatively unbiased, the Commission chose to interpret them selectively, applying purchasing power parity to boost the value of Indian military salaries; and then comparing them with the per capita income of the concerned country. Given India’s abysmal per capital income, military salaries look good by comparison. The Seventh Pay Commission uses this to argue that India’s military is paid very well by international standards.
Since the hefty raises of the Fifth and Sixth Pay Commissions, few soldiers claim they are poorly paid. Even so, festering resentment stems from the widespread belief that civilian officials, particularly from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), conspire to whittle away the military’s relative status. Soldiers point to a host of generous allowances and the assured promotion benefits that are triggered for entire civilian batches as a result of the first officer of that batch getting promoted. A key element of this was instituted by the Sixth Pay Commission through a mechanism called “non-functional financial upgrade”.
This mandates that when an IAS officer from a particular batch is promoted to a certain rank, all his batchmates from some sixty Group ‘A’ central services also start drawing the higher pay scale two years later, irrespective of competence or vacancies in that rank. The military had taken up a case for a similar upgrade, but this was not agreed to. 

The Seventh Pay Commission does not recommend its extension to the military either.
Thus, while practically every civilian central service officer would make it to the top pay grades, the army will remain a sharply pyramidal meritocracy, where less than one per cent of officers are promoted to lieutenant general rank (higher administrative grade, in pay commission scales). Those soldiers who do not make the cut – including meritorious officer, who are held back only because of limited promotion vacancies at each rank – are entitled to neither the power nor the pelf of higher rank since the army has no non-functional financial upgrade. The military’s demand for parity has been one of the five “core anomalies” of the Sixth Pay Commission, and was strongly pressed before the “Empowered Committee” last week.
Adding to the bitterness amongst soldiers is the argument, increasingly voiced by civil service officers, that soldiers’ emoluments should be evaluated in terms of “cost-to-company”, taking into account all their emoluments and facilities. Top generals argue that the armed forces constitute “the cheapest gun fodder”, since they incur the least lifetime cost to the government. They point out that soldiers incur the lowest induction cost, since they do not get paid salary during their training period, unlike civilian officers and the Central Armed Police Forces. They have the lowest retention cost, since they retire early, thus drawing salaries for less time than civilian counterparts; and they also have the lowest advancement cost, since relatively small numbers are promoted to higher rank, leaving many languishing at lower pay grades. Finally, soldiers also incur the lowest pension costs, since their pensions are fixed at 50 per cent of the last pay drawn – at lower pay grades in most cases.
The army has slowly – and sullenly – come to terms with the “first amongst equals” status of the IAS, which has been inexorably institutionalised since the Third Pay Commission noted that “an IAS officer gets an unequalled opportunity of living and working among the people, participating in planning and implementation of developmental programmes, working with the Panchayati Raj institutions, coordinating the activities of government departments in the district and dealing directly with the problems of law and order.” Given this, the Third Pay Commission granted the IAS (and the Indian Foreign Service) three extra increments at each of three successive seniority grades – senior time scale, junior administrative grade and selection grade – to which IAS officers are promoted at four, nine and 13 years of service, respectively. Since the other services got just one increment at these grades, IAS/IFS officers accumulate six extra increments by the time they have served 13 years. This lead in emoluments continues through their service.
However, successive governments have ensured the military remains the “first amongst uniformed services.” The Seventh Pay Commission now upsets this balance by recommending that “the criticality of functions at the district administration level holds good equally for the IAS, Indian Police Service (IPS) as well as the Indian Forest Service (IFoS).” It recommends that six additional increments be extended also to the IPS and IFoS.
The military chiefs have argued strongly before the “Empowered Committee” that the military – which they term “the instrument of last resort” – does not have the option of “handing over an adverse situation to any other government agency”. They have argued that, while the police and central armed police force personnel often lay down their lives, including in cross border firing, they incur a “lower level of risk” compared with the armed forces, which “actively seek encounters with terrorists and close combat with the enemy, despite the high risk of death”. The chiefs have argued that military service demands higher levels of proficiency, commitment and sense of sacrifice.
There is little to suggest, however, that the government is listening. The anomalies of the Sixth Pay Commission still remain unresolved, including the five “core anomalies” that include the military’s demand for non-functional financial upgrade. A committee of secretaries that was constituted in 2011 heard the military for a month and then tossed the ball into the court of the Seventh Pay Commission. There is little to suggest the military’s current representations would be treated with greater sensitivity.
Sources ::BS

 

Comments by Col Lamba 

1) Sincerely thanks 3 Chief joining first time & putting valid arguments .

2,)But  No fruitful outcome will be there as mind set if Babu's is money biased & not National Freedom 

3) They think Freedom is cost based . O.K  we grant this for moment.

A) 26/11. What was direct + indirect cost of damage due to failure of babus  & cops. DGP was sleeping in car & a Major  was bleeding & died . He accomplished task in unknown area with zero intelligence. How much money & lives were saved by handful of soldiers .I.e the cost to company.. Put cost of each live saved.

B)J& K. Floods. ..babus & cops were not visible on ground.Govt was not existing although crores of rupees each year are pumped for flood relief to state... How many lives were saved & how fast law & order was restored  by forces. Calculate all costs I.e cost to company. People took soldiers next to God. So where is your cost to company.

C) In CHENNAI the situation was worst. Although forces reached in 2 hour but Babus  were lost for 11 hour & were unable to decide the place of Aid to Civil Power. What a Shane. How much loss would have occurred in these 11 hours to loss of property & lives. That is cost of company for handful of soldiers.

D) Olympic games babus & Nation as whole could make a bridge in 7 years. The nation respect was at stake. Forces made bridge in 5 days. Work out cost of bridge( not built ) but crores shown as expendutue. Add cost of nation. That is cost if company for handful soldiers.

E) Utterkhand .. A worship place.. Saw worst disaster. Govt official were not seen during entire rescue operation. Forces saved not many lives but even fed them from their own ration by cutting their own stomach. Work out all cost of lives saved & reconstruction of  passage tracks/ roads. That is cost of company .

F) See the utternonsense & shameless request from babu's a boy goes in well & they need army. Work cost of admin & their failure + life if kid. That is cost of company for handful soldiers 

2) The forces were above IAS at time of indepence of India. With gradual degradation in 7th CPC forces have come down even below cops. At time of CM kairon there was only one IGP Ashwani Kumar. The same Punjab got split in UT Chandigarh .Punjab & Haryana. Now count DGP .Addl DGP in these 3 states & count IGP ..certainly one will go mad by seeing number & deteriorated law & order situation. But Army had only one chief  now & then.

4) IAS get 2 blanket promotion from on set & thus even non performer gets LT Gen pension.IAS neither faces hardships like forces nor promotion exam's/ promotion boards like forces Officer. Plus on own failure calls forces in aid .what a wonderful life.

Management Peter Principal of promotion fits on babus  . Kick upward for level of inefficiency.

5) Babus & cops are never sacked for failure but are posted to safe place. Where in forces at drop of hat one is court martialed.

6) Forces live in same society .Here a junior officer of IAS/ Cop enjoys maximum social respect where as even highest force's officer in same station lives in isolation from civil society.

7) Now let see international cost

A) UNO forces is a place where world armies & babu's can be compared .compate salaries & perks  the Indian soldier is paid the least.

B) Babu's are placed at lower stature & our babus tell our officer not to put Flag on car like UNO forces rule . IAS lads feels degraded.( See Shashi Tharror article on the subject 

C)Compare with other nation how frequently forces are called in aid to civil power& How additional risk Indian forces have to face.

D) Compare with other nation .. We created Bangla desh with 90000 POW.. Which other nation has done it. I am proud of it being active in this operation

E) Other nation pay pension ranging from 75% to 100%. But here Babu's lifted their pension from 33% to 50% & Brought down forces pension from 70% to 50% 

What a shame. Reduce babus  pension to pre 1973  level & increase forces pension to minimum 75% as per international pension 

8)Babus need moneyvfir selfish ends but not quality of work for nation .A Forest officer could be HEAD of police ..( Zero knowledge of police )

A Arts graduate IAS officer will be placed Head of industry ( Zero Knowledge of Engineering ) & So on

Thus nation does not progress . See we got freedom in 1947. China in 1949. Japan was ruined in 1945,

See other 2 nations progress & see ourvstare duevti these. Non Performers babu's.

Recommendations

1) It is evident now that Forces is a lost resort with  government on failure of babu's & Cops 

Thus their salaries & PENSION should be much higher.

2)Forces have proven their loyalty. In worst of times.where babu's & cops ran away The forces came out with flying color & saved lives of brother's & sisters.

3) Kindly ensure the moral of forces is maintained.

A negative effect can lower moral which will be not good for nation 

4) Now forces are like Brahma Astra ..so respect them & their work. Pay a respected Salary & PENSION

Col Lamba ( one man army)

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