NEW DELHI: In a last-ditch gambit to woo the defence community of 14 lakh serving and over 25 lakh retired military personnel, the government has yanked the long-demanded, much-promised but never-implemented one rank, one pension (OROP) rabbit out of its hat in the run-up to general elections.
Finance minister P Chidambaram said the OROP decision will be "implemented prospectively" for armed forces from 2014-2015, with the government transferring Rs 500 crore to the defence pension account in the current fiscal to "close the gap for all retirees (pre-2006 and post-2006) in all ranks".
This comes just after Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi told a group of ex-servicemen last week he fully backed their OROP demand, in what now seems to be a scripted interaction. The defence community, after all, swells into a sizeable and vocal vote bank of close to two crore people if family members are also taken into account.
Courtesy: Times of India
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