Chennai, June 2: Peeved at the raw deal extended by the Fifth pay panel, the government's revenue collectors are up in arms. The leaders of the coordination committee of employees' federations in the Department of Revenue are contemplating a five-day nationwide strike after July 10 to register their protest against the Pay commission's alleged bias against them.

If the stir threat is carried out, it will adversely affect the revenue collections in the country to the tune of 2,500 crore.

The decision to consider a strike call was debated at length at the recent national convention of the employees of the three main revenue earning departments—customs, excise and income-tax—under the Union ministry of finance held at Chennai Custom House on May 27.

The strike could actually turn out to be a nine-day-long affair and adversely affecting revenue collections to the tune of over Rs 2,500 crore.The revenue department's 1.45 employees in three divisions are upset over the pay commission's remarks about their reward scheme.

Among other things, the commission observed that customs and excise officers got paid either by the government for registering cases against offenders or by the offenders themselves for not registering cases.

While this remark has riled most revenue employees, they are also agitated over the the lack of pay parity with government staff in other services.

The revenue men want the government to reject the remarks made by the commission which cast a slur on the profession. At the Chennai convention, many speakers made caustic remarks against Justice S R Pandian, who headed the pay panel. According to the delegates, the panel had overstepped its brief by making such a remark.

They also spoke against the influence of the IAS lobby on the pay panel which gave them additional benefits even while recommending the scrapping of some other benefits currently available to them, including rewards for booking offenders.

According to some of the leaders, even senior secretaries in the department of revenue were angry about the remarks of the commission, saying in private that these were in bad taste.

At the Chennai convention, officers from Groups B to D in the three departments, barring a minor section of the customs staff, were represented. This means that the convention represented everyone from departmental superintendents down to the peons and sepoys in all the three departments. The restiveness among the staff was very palpable as all the delegates were in a mood to intensify the stir, which is currently taking the form of lunch-hour demonstrations at the headquarters of all the commissionerates of the three departments.

Over three dozen delegates representing various federations spoke on the need to go for an indefinite strike but the leaders, the joint conveners of the coordination committee, Shankar Biswas (central excise) and K K N Kutty (income tax), try to cool the frayed tempers. They advised delegates the need to exercise restraint and not jump into an indefinite strike call.Kutty explained that all members of convention will be participating in the agitation planned by the confederation of central government employees in the capital on June 9.

If such a call is given by the national coordination committee of the three revenue departments it would spell disaster, especially for domestic manufacturers who also work on holidays, as the excise staff will not be endorsing their invoices for finished products.

Going by the revenue figures projected in the current budget, the three departments account for over Rs 1,50,000 crore of revenue collections. A five-day strike would cost the government a cool Rs 2,500 crore at least.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.