You're out of options, General Satbir Singh: Take the OROP now and head for the courts

You're out of options, General Satbir Singh: Take the OROP now and head for the courts

The government is set to announce its One Rank One Pension (OROP) proposal at 3 pm. And from all accounts, the ex-servicemen are set to reject it.

There is a thing called principle, and it is alive and potent, and it fights and flies in the face of pragmatism.

It is also hard to hang in there when the ground support is melting away like lava.

The ex-servicemen will be confronted with just this pressure if they insist on continuing with their demands after Saturday. You don’t have to like it, but when it comes to games of political chess, the bureaucratic babus of India are grandmasters at the board and these soldiers are no match for them.

The announcement by the government of the sanction of the OROP should have been greeted with whoops of joy. Instead, there is a sense of betrayal because the annual pension review is not integrated in the decision, and the government has chosen the clever path of giving in unilaterally but not totally.

Argument: the concession has not been brought about through mutual negotiations and the petitioners have not been party to the contents of the final document.

The general sentiment is that there is no honour in such a conclusion. The former soldiers feel like prisoners of war who are not party to their release and what it entails. They have just been told the war is over, they can go.

Two ways of looking at this situation.

One: The review could have been added in the announcement and then acted upon each year as per the socio-economic conditions prevalent in the country at that juncture. Once the protest had disbanded, it would have become impossible to bring the steam back into the cooker and the ex-servicemen would just have had to accept the situation from year to year.

In the long term, it may have been the better choice for the government.

Two: The government doesn’t like to be strong-armed into surrender, however legitimate the demands. If it is seen to capitulate, others will leap onto the bandwagon.

So it has chosen the half-and-half option and predicated it to a scenario in which the nation per se gets a bit fed up with the whole thing, and begins to believe the former soldiers have pushed their luck.

It’s a pretty simple equation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has kept his word. They wanted OROP, they got what they wanted, now back off. Spin doctors will catapult this imagery across the nation and are probably already hard at work to dispense this pearl of wisdom.

I am afraid that the agitation may continue and it is perhaps exactly what the government hopes for. With every extra day of protest at Jantar Mantar, the ex-servicemen begin to look that much more ungrateful. 

To the average mind, you have eaten the grass, Sir, what are you hanging around for?

So the question is that if they reject it as an association, are they speaking for thousands of other soldiers and officers who want this financial relief and are probably saying , hey there, let it go, we have fought and won the high ground? More vitally, can the government implement OROP despite the rejection by the protestors? Yes, it can. That way the General Satbir Singh-led regiment literally gets isolated and that seems to be the aim. Reduce the agitation to a mere handful of old men making strident sounds and get on with governance.

“After all, people of India, we kept our pledge, honoured the 15 August made by the Prime Minister to our brave soldiers, now we cannot keep responding to other demands. Come on, chaps, be happy.”

It will be very easily forgotten that the annual review (or even a bi-annual) was integral to the OROP movement.

So, if we concede that the government has won by ‘losing’ and given the OROP mandate with a five-year review element, all of which has the Ex-Servicemen’s League teed off, what now?

You are General Singh.  What are your options?

You can continue to sit at Jantar Mantar until your own cadres start wondering if it is worth it. How long can you keep going? Even worthy causes run out of stamina.

You can accept it all gracefully now while putting on record your disagreements, and then go legal for the annual pension review using the precedents that exist for it as your platform. Fight for it in the courts.

That is smart and logical and gets you to leave that Jantar Mantar stage with grace and dignity intact. And the OROP in your pocket.

And your principles.

Source :First Post



From Hindustan Times..

Govt announces OROP, veterans say agitation will continue

The Narendra Modi government on Saturday announced the much-waited OROP scheme for defence veterans, but the ex-servicemen 'categorically' rejected all the proposals and said they will continue to protest.

Defence minister Manohar Parrikar announced the one rank, one pension scheme during a press conference assuring an equal pension to three million military personnel retiring in the same rank with the same length of service, regardless of the date of retirement.

"The government has accepted OROP in true spirit without being constrained by previous inaccurate estimates. Despite the huge financial burden, the government has taken the decision to implement OROP. The previous government had estimated a cost of Rs 500 crore, however, the reality is that OROP would cost Rs. 8000 crore to the exchequer to implement and it will keep increasing," Parrikar told reporters in New Delhi.

The minister said the arrears would amount to anywhere between Rs 10,000 crore and Rs 12,000 crore.

"OROP review will occur every five years and the scheme will be effective from July 1, 2014, and the base year would be 2013," he added.

Parrikar said the government would constitute a single-member judicial committee to look into various aspects of OROP, including inter-services matters, and it will submit its report in six months.

OROP arrears will be paid in four half-yearly installments and all widows, including war widows, will get arrears in lump-sum. Army personnel who have taken voluntary retirement will not be covered under OROP.

He said an order on OROP will be issued by the ministry of defence very soon.

"PM Modi has fulfilled his commitment and implement OROP. I appeal to the veterans now to continue the task of nation building," he said.

Agitating ex-servicemen, who had met Parrikar earlier in the day, rejected the government's announcements saying they are not fully satisfied.

"We only accept one point made by the government and that is the implementation of OROP and categorically reject everything else," said Major General Satbir Singh (retd), who heads the Indian Ex-Servicemen Movement.

He said they cannot accept the government's proposal on one-man judicial panel that will offer its report in six months saying the time period has to be thirty days and demanded for a five-member panel of which three should be veterans, one serving serviceman and an officer of their choice.

The veterans, who had been holding protests across the country for 82 days, also rejected the government's proposal of a five-year review period of pensions saying they must be reviewed every year.

"A senior officer can never receive a smaller pension than a junior officer," said Maj Gen Singh.

He said they need more clarification on whether premature retirement qualifies for the scheme, issue of averaging of pension and the government's decision to not give OROP benefits to those who have opted for voluntary retirement scheme (VRS).

"At least 40% of our servicemen take VRS and if the government still doesn't accept it then it is a big blow to the forces."

Maj Gen Singh said they will take a call on the hunger strike and inform the media later in the evening.

"For now, the consensus we have arrived at is that the OROP agitation will continue," he said.