One Rank One Pension – Ex-Servicemen Decide to Fight
Ever since Narendra Modi took charge as the new Prime Minister, expectations have been running high. When expectations run high, so do disappointments. Despite the fact that some time is needed for implementing the various promises that his party had made during the Parliamentary elections, questions are also being raised as to why there is such a long delay.
The Indian Ex-Servicemen Movement (IESM) has announced that it is going to launch a series of protests demanding that the One Rank One Pension scheme be implemented.
A group of Ex-Servicemen met Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Saturday, but he didn’t give any date by which the scheme will be implemented. Parrikar understood our problem and argument in the two meetings but he did not give us any date for OROP implementation. Therefore, we are going ahead with our agitation,” said Major-General (retd) Satbir Singh, chairperson of the Indian Ex-Servicemen Movement.
The first step is to launch a series of protests. One-Rank-One-Pension was one of the biggest and most important promises that Narendra Modi had made. According to this scheme, all the ex-servicemen of the same rank will be given the same pension irrespective of the year in which they had retired or quit the services. There shall not be any variations. Laws relating to this have to be passed by the Parliament. To probably serve as reminders to the promise made by him, large numbers of ex-servicemen used to throng all the political rallies organized by Modi.
Modi clarified that there are some legal issues that have to be sorted before the scheme is implemented, but he promised fast action. But, the ex-servicemen are going to protest from the 14th of this month to make the OROP scheme a reality. They proposed to hold a Rally at Jantar Mantar on June 14 and hunger strike from 15th onwards.
Everybody is curious to find out how Modi is going to handle this protest – probably the first large-scale show of disgruntlement against the NDA government.