Senior Congress leader Lieutenant General T P S Rawat (Rtd) has accused the BJP of misleading the ex -servicemen in the name of One Rank One Pension (OROP) and politicising the armed forces of the country. Addressing media persons at the state party office here on Monday, Rawat said that for the first time in the history of independent India, ten former chiefs of all three services have written a letter to the President in which they have mentioned about discrimination on the issue of OROP and have expressed apprehension that the morale of security forces can get affected by it.
He said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Siachen trip in the year 2014 had promised to implement a system of uniform pension for armed forces personnel. He added that on August 31, 2015, finance minister had said that ‘I have my own formula on what OROP means’. Rawat said that no one knows what this formula is. Launching a scathing attack on the BJP government, he said that Modi government has money to waive of loans worth Rs 85000 Crore of some industrialists but don’t have money for the personnel of the security forces. Rawat said that while the government has given benefit of Non Functional Financial Up-gradation (NFFU) under which non promoted officers get salary, the promoted officers get, in the administrative service but has not extended its benefit to the officers of armed forces. Lt Gen Rawat (Rtd) took the BJP government to the task to what he termed as politicisation of the armed forces. He said that the credit of the surgical strikes and the air strikes should be given to only armed forces of the country and not anyone else. Rawat claimed that BJP is taking shelter behind the armed forces as both the union and the state governments had no achievements to show to the electorate in the general elections of 2019. Taking strong exception to the statement of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath in which he referred the army as ‘ Modi Sena ( Modi Army), Rawat termed it as insult of the Armed forces. “ It a tradition that the armed forces are kept away from any political discussion, By this the dignity of our forces is maintained but this government in order to hide its failures has broken the tradition,’’ he said.
Rawat also attacked the government for failing miserably in Kashmir and making things very tensed there. He also claimed that Modi government has compromised the national interests in the Rafale deal.