Police barricade parts of the National Capital to foil demonstrations by Youth Congress as Parrikar and his predecessor Antony exchange fiery words
The national capital continued to remain choked on Friday as the political slug-fest on suicide of retired Subedar Kishen Grewal continued with Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi meeting ex-servicemen protesting at Jantar Mantar for months and then accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of cheating them and delaying the implementation of One Rank, One Pension (OROP) scheme. The Bharatiya Janata Party quickly responded reminding the Congress that it sat on the OROP for 10 years asking Rahul Gandhi to introspect and stop playing "dirty politics. To foil demonstrations of the Youth Congress police had barricaded the city.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and his predecessor A K Antony also exchanged fiery words. Antony had accused the government of diluting the UPA's OROP decision of same pension to same rank holder with same length of service irrespective of the date of retirement. Parrikar, asserted that 95% of the 20.63 lakh retired soldiers have received OROP and anomalies pertain to only fewer than one lakh cases.
Congress, which was on back foot on the issue of nationalism particularly after September 29 surgical strikes across the Line of Control, has found the OROP issue and suicide of ex-serviceman an opportunity to hit out at the government.
Rahul, who addressed the media along with Antony after an audience with the agitating ex-servicemen, said Subedar Grewal committed suicide only to bring in focus non-payment of OROP. He said he was not concerned that he was detained thrice while sympathising with Grewal's family, but he was shocked to see the way police dragged, abused and beat up the veteran's family members before his eyes. He asked the government once again to apologise to the family for the ill-treatment that should not be inflicted on any countryman.
The BJP spokesman Shrikant Sharma ridiculd Rahul for his sudden sympathy towards the ex-servicemen whom the Congress had 'fooled for 43 years'.
"If raising and championing the voice, the pain, the agony and anguish of India's soldiers is politics, we will do such politics a million times more," Rahul said in a retort to the BJP's charge. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley also blamed administrative lapses on the part of bank for not remitting the entitled pension after he was granted benefits. Defence Ministry had also earlier blamed the bank for disbursing Rs 5,000 less than the official monthly pension of Rs 28,000 to deceased Subedar.
But the chief manager of the State Bank of India at Bhiwani in Haryana said the bank cannot be blamed for less money since the pensions are disbursed in accordance with the Pension Payment Order received from the concerned department in the ministry.
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