Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, November 8
The State Ex-Servicemen Welfare Association (SEWA), Punjab, in its emergency meeting held today “out-rightly” rejected the notification on ‘one rank, one pension’ (OROP) formula issued by the central government on Saturday and decided to carry on its agitation.
Pointing out that the pension will be fixed for all pensioners on the basis of average of minimum and maximum pension drawn by the personnel retired during calendar year 2013 with the same rank and same number of years of service, Col Kuldip Singh Grewal (Retd), the association’s president said this had defied the very concept of OROP as accepted by Parliament during the tenure of two different governments.
He said leave aside other pensioners even those who retired in 2013 will get different pensions. Those who picked up the rank earlier with the same service will get more pension than those who picked up rank later. Under this clause most of the ex-servicemen will not get any benefit, he added.
Members of the association said personnel who opted to get discharge on their own request will not get any benefit of OROP. This clause will change the very structure of armed forces as the government wanted to keep the Army young. Consequent to implementation of this cause, soldiers will retire with full service and at much older age to get the future benefits of OROP.
Some ex-servicemen also contended that soldiers could resort to litigation as to why should they not be retired on a par with other government employees. As on today, retirees at early age have more chances of getting employment in the civilian sector and retiring at older ages would increase unemployment among them.
They added that the appointment of a judicial committee to look into anomalies would be of no use as representatives of stake holders are not a part of it and a lawman may not be familiar with military culture and intrinsic military matters.