Protesting veterans to return medals
NEW DELHI: Taking a cue from artists, veterans Friday said they would return war honours and observe a “black Diwali” to protest against the government’s failure to implement the promised one rank-one pension scheme.
Defence minister Manohar Parrikar’s assurance that the OROP notification would come before Diwali — November 11 — cut no ice with the veterans, many of whom have been holding a sit-in here at Jantar Mantar for 144 days.
“The government has not honoured its commitment. We are not taking the minister’s latest statement seriously as several such assurances have been made in the past,” Major General Satbir Singh (retd), who heads the Indian Ex-servicemen Movement, said. Parrikar had on September 5 announced that the 40-year-old demand had been accepted, but the government is yet to issue a notification. Ex-servicemen would return their medals across 676 districts on November 9 and 10, and veterans in Delhi would observe a black Diwali at Jantar Mantar, Singh said.
The veterans did not call off their stir despite Parrikar’s announcement in September, as they felt the government had accepted the demand only in a diluted form.The pension scheme is aimed at ensuring that retired soldiers of the same rank and the same length of service receive the same pension, irrespective of their date of retirement.
According to the government’s calculations, the scheme will require an annual payout in the range of R8,000 crore to R10,000 crore. To be implemented from July 1, 2014, paying out arrears will cost the government R10,000 crore to R12,000 crore. While announcing the scheme, the government had said orders for implementation would be out in “15 days to one month”.
The veterans’ main concerns about the scheme still centre around premature retirees, pension revision, mode of re-calculation and base year for reworking pensions. The veterans are particularly upset about OROP not being extended to pre-mature retirees and the proposal to re-calculate pensions every five years instead of annually.
The latest round of protest also seeks to push for one more demand. Singh said the status of soldiers had been diluted over the years as compared to the bureaucrats and the veterans would fight to get it restored to what it was before January 26, 1950. “Then an IGP was below a brigadier but now they have upgraded themselves to DGP and are above lieutenant generals,” he said.
In recent days, many filmmakers, writers, poets and scientists have returned national awards to protest against “growing intolerance” and “muzzling of dissent”, with many of them accusing the Modi government of trying to polarise the country.