This is the third time Admiral Mehta has been pulled up by Antony in recent months — earlier, he was pulled up for his remarks over the build-up of Chinese submarines.

It is learnt that while Antony has agreed to look into grievances, even push in Parliament the “demands” of the armed forces over pay, he is upset by the way Admiral Mehta dealt with the matter. After being almost nudged by Admiral Mehta to “refuse” implementation of the pay panel report, the armed forces did not submit their revised salary slips to the Ministry’s accounts office.

Antony is part of a three-member panel — the others are Pranab Mukherjee, the panel head, and P Chidambaram — tasked to look into the pay anomalies. On September 26, he had an uncharacteristic tough talk with the three chiefs. He is now said to have conveyed to Mukherjee that the Government has agreed in principle to the Services’ demand for restoring 70 per cent “extant pensionary weightage” to jawans on the basis of their last drawn pay.

The pay commission had recommended that the jawans be given 50 per cent “pensionary weightage” and had provided an option of lateral entry into paramilitary and Central police forces. But the armed forces wanted the lateral entry scheme approved and implemented by the Government before effecting the recommendation for 50 per cent “pensionary weightage”.

Underlining that there will be no pensionary loss to jawans, Antony is said to be pushing for upgrading the pay band of Lt Colonels and their Navy, IAF equivalents — Pay Band-4 instead of Pay Band-3.

The other “demands” were for uniform grades of pay at par with civilian officers, placing Lt Generals in the Higher Administrative Grade plus scale.