Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday attacked Narendra Modi Government over non-implementation of ‘One-Rank-One-Pension’ (OROP) scheme. During a meeting with the delegation of the ex-servicemen cell of the Congress, Rahul said he will “pressurise” the Centre to act on the issue at the earliest.
OROP is a long standing demand of ex-servicemen’s associations. It relates to payment of uniform pension to defence forces personnel retiring in the same rank with the same length of service, irrespective of their date of retirement.
The UPA Government during the last lap of its governance had announced implementation OROP and even allocated a token amount in its interim Budget last year to show its intention for implementation. And even though the NDA Government too expressed commitment on OROP, the Congress has accused it of ignoring the cause of soldiers.
Ever since his return from sabbatical, Rahul has been raising issues ranging from farmers in distress to Noida’s flat buyers to net neutrality.
“One year has passed of the NDA Government, of the Modi Government and it has not proceeded ahead with the issue. They (ex servicemen) had knocked the doors of the Government, but nothing materialised. Army, Navy, Air Force take care of the nation, secure our borders, their demands should be met. We had allotted money and also taken a decision. One year has passed and this should happen at the earliest. We will pressurise the Government and ask them to take a decision at the earliest,” Rahul told journalists after meeting with the delegation.
Col (retd) BC lagwal, head of the party’s ex-servicemen cell in Himachal Pradesh, demanded that the Government expedite the process. Former Minister of State for Defence and Congress leader Jitendra Singh accused the Government of being anti-soldier and said that the Government might “dilute” some of the provisions of OROP scheme.
“There were some discrepancies of about 10-20 per cent in the OROP scheme. We even cleared that in 2014. We also ensured that handicap persons and widows would get benefit. But it has been a year now and the Government has still not implemented OROP. This Government is anti-soldiers. We had sat on a dharna at Jantar Mantar on February 1 this year. We were given an assurance by the Government that the problem will be solved in seven days, but nothing has happened yet,” Singh said.