While welcoming Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement that personnel from the Armed services opting for premature retirement will be covered by the OROP (one rank one pension) scheme, former servicemen in Visakhapatnam are still apprehensive and prefer to wait till they see the implementation order in fine print.
“It is a four-decade-old issue, and it took so long for the government to come to a decision. There is a feeling that the decision has been taken keeping the Bihar elections in mind. And the final order may have some riders. So, unless we see the fine print, we have an uneasy feeling,” says Lt. Colonel (retired) S.M. Basha, who is also president of the Visakhapatnam Ex-Servicemen Association.
The former officer is also of the opinion that the government is misguided by the VRS concept.
“In the Armed forces, there is no VRS. There is premature retirement. We do not understand how the word VRS had crept into the draft,” he says.
Apart from seeing the order in fine print, the servicemen are also unhappy about the one-man judicial review commission.
“We want at least a five-man commission with three ex-servicemen, one serving officer, and one from the government side,” says convenor of the Visakhapatnam Ex-Servicemen Society Chandrashekar Prasad.
But what really has upset the former servicemen is the clause of revision.
“The government has set a five-year period and we are demanding a one or two-year period for revision. The main goal of the OROP is to see that a junior does not supersede a senior in the pension scheme. But if the revision period is set to five years, a junior will supersede,” says Mr. Chandrasekhar Prasad, who had retired as Master Chief Petty Officer from the Indian Navy.
Decision may have been taken keeping the Bihar polls in mind, say
ex-servicemen
