WHY OROP IS IN TURMOIL?

Confidential - Confidential

Dear All,

I had the privilege of attending an Ex- Servicemen rally in Bangalore right in front of  Town-hall, a highly visible & prominent location. The point I wish to bring it to your kind notice is: Meet itself was well attended - with usual noisy speeches.

Highlight: At the end of the meet one of my colleague ex-CDM officer & self were walking away from the venue, when a Sikh Brig rank officer (who had made a short but good speech)stopped by us and told usin confidence - "I attended a similar ex-servicemen meet just 20 days ago at Amritsar and I gave a speech at that meet also. Shri A....(current FM) was passing thru the venue after a visit to Golden temple  and stopped by called me, as I was the tallest officer, but with no badges to show my former rank.

FM told me (the Sikh Brig), "you (army) people were responsible for my defeat by One lakh votes, as you have a strength of 93,000 settled here". I replied that that was not true. 

But FM said, "my inner sources have confirmed that it is because of ESM voting for Capt A.....(Congress party) that I (FM) faced worst embarrassment of  political career. It is your turn to face music", and he drove away.

So political vengeance of an important politicians at play here with OROP? I leave the final analysis to you all.

IMP Note: The time was well past 12 noon, so Sikh officer, Brig rank could not have been carried away! and Being afternoon, I was well within my senses & fully alert mentally!

Pl keep  it confidential only as more time will be wasted in real OROP issues. 

(SOURCE: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/veteransindia/_0pHbsPncTM AND VASUNDHRA BLOG)

Demand for OROP: ‘Blade-runner’ D P Singh to continue his fight

Singh, who lost his right leg while fighting the 1999 Kargil War, will spend the next two hours trying to put on his prosthetic limb.

Major D P Singh will be up at 2.30 am, hours before the rest of the country wakes up on Sunday, the day the nation proudly marks the Kargil Vijay Diwas. 

Singh, who lost his right leg while fighting the 1999 Kargil War, will spend the next two hours trying to put on his prosthetic limb. By 5.30 am, he will be at Dhaula Kuan, where he will be joined by other military veterans, in t-shirts emblazoned with slogans seeking the implementation of the One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme. 

At 5.45 am, Singh, popularly known as the Indian Army’s ‘blade-runner’, will start his 11-km run. His journey will take him through Teen Murti Marg, Akbar Road and Connaught Place and will include a homage at Vijay Chowk before culminating at Jantar Mantar at 7.30 am. 

While the run has been organised to support the larger cause of OROP, Singh also has another reason to undertake the gruelling physical exercise. He will be running for the sake of the army’s many faceless and nameless soldiers. 

On July 15, 1999, four of them had risked their lives to rescue him from the battlefield, in the thick of the Kargil conflict. “If those four jawans had not picked me up from the battle zone, I would not have been alive today. It is for them, for the Indian soldier, that I feel I should run,” Singh told The Sunday Express. 

He will spend the rest of Kargil Vijay Diwas at Jantar Mantar, where he will be joined by social activist Anna Hazare, to demand the implementation of OROP. 

Singh’s long and arduous journey to overcome his physical limitations, after being seriously injured in Kargil War, is fairly well known. Not so well-known is the fact that the officer had to fight a long, gruelling legal battle to claim his rightful dues. The 14-year-long fight culminated with an order from the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) in 2013, asking the Army to pay Singh the correct pension amount due to him. 

But Singh is reluctant to talk about it. “It is in the final stage of implementation now,” he says without divulging any more details about the “personal” struggle. 

Singh also happens to be part of a committee, proposed by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, to resolve issues and litigations related to pension and service benefits of army personnel.

(Source- Sanjha Morcha)

Open Letter To PM: Why I Won’t #GiveItUp So Ministers Can Get ‘Free Phone Calls’ By Sanjana Choudhury

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

Every time we open a newspaper or switch on the TV, we encounter your smiling face asking us to join the #GiveItUpMovement, apparently to “Be a Proud Partner in Nation Building”. What you’re asking us to ‘give up’ is the measly LPG subsidy that we are entitled to. But here is why I won’t.

Image source: youtube.com

Currently, an Indian household is entitled to get twelve 14.2 Kg cylinders of domestic cooking gas per year. At the subsidised rate, each cylinder costs Rs. 417.82 while the market price stands at Rs. 608.50 (for Indane Gas in Delhi). So,for each household the subsidy is Rs. 190.68 per cylinder and amounts to a measly sum of Rs.2,288.16 per year. As of now, each Member of Parliament gets a monthly salary of Rs. 50,000, constituency allowance of Rs. 45,000 and office expence allowance of Rs. 45,000, adding up to Rs.140,000. Surely, the government can spend Rs. 2288 for each household when it can pay each MP a whopping Rs. 1.4 lakh per month.

Each minute of a Parliament session costs us, the tax payers, Rs. 29,000. So while the politicians rage and create a ruckus, passing no legislations of value or even coming close to debating any, the money that’s wasted there is fine, while we must go on to give up the LPG subsidy. Why?

Our tax goes to feed the MPs

The Indian citizen is hard-put to pay his Income Tax, Service Tax, Property Tax, Value Added Tax and what-not, but the rich MPs have enjoyed an overwhelming subsidy of Rs 60 crores at the parliament canteens over the last 5 years alone. The Rangarajan committee has outrageously drawn the urban poverty line at Rs. 47 which, hilariously enough, can only be applicable if one is dining at the parliament canteen.

Evidently, the government believes it more worthwhile to spend Rs 200 crores to build a statue of Sardar Patel rather than provide Minimum Support Price MSP for farmers. While the nation clamours for One Rank One Pension for ex-servicemen, the government wastes money on celebrating Yoga Day, and trying to make a success out of the inefficientUID project.

And really, who are we “building the nation” for?

While the common man is constantly struggling to meet his bills, the government pays hundreds of crores on the Ministers and MPs. They receive amenities to travel in AC First Class by any railway in India on the strength of his ID card when every other Indian must pay Rs. 1203 for similar facilities for a 50 Km ride on the Rajdhani Express. They can travel by air, free of cost, and even get 34 free air journeys along with spouse or relatives but for the Indian citizen thelowest possible airfare is around Rs. 4000 (from Mumbai to Delhi).

The official website of Indian Lok Sabha states that, our MPs are entitled to license-free flats along with furniture worth Rs.60,000 throughout their terms of office. In addition to this, they receive free supply of 4000 Kl of water and 50,000 units of electricity per annum. Besides these facilities, they can have upto 3 telephones without paying installation or rental costs, and are entitled to 150,000 free calls from these telephones.

So all I want to ask is this, do we have to #GiveItUp so that our respected ministers can get free phone calls?

Respectfully, An Indian Citizen

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(SOURCE- YOUTH KI AWAZ)

WE THE SOLDIERS : ON KARGIL VIJAY DIWAS, VETERAN'S WAR CRY FOR HONOUR

On We The People, we discuss the irony of this year's Kargil Vijay Diwas. While we honour our war heroes today, they have spent this day protesting. Their long-standing demand of One Rank One Pension is yet to be implemented. Over 80 per cent appeals filed by Defence Ministry in the Supreme Court are against our own disabled soldiers. Even as we honour our soldiers today, we ask: Have they been defeated by the system? Why does our government make them run from pillar to post for a disability pension as low as Rs. 155? Has One Rank One Pension for defence personnel become a forgotten promise? When will 'acche din' come for our soldiers?

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO

(SOURCE- NDTV)

Different View of India: Pictures of Indian cities you don't see in overseas media.

In the western media, we often see only one type of Indian image. Crowded, dirty and polluted. The pictures would be often taken from random sewage canals and slums. The problem is that those underbellies exist in every part of the world. Shanghai can be like this or like this:

This is not to deny that Shanghai and other great world cities have nicer infrastructure than the Indian metropolises. It is just that we are seeing things in binary instead of shades of gray. Indian cities sure have more than their share of dirtiness. Those are the reality and so are the ones below. The problem is that if only one type of pictures are shown it totally distorts the reality. Here is the other side. 

Mumbai skyline:

Driving through Mumbai's marine drive.

A few kilometers north, Bandra-Worli sealink that connects traditional Mumbai city with its suburbs:

The new Mumbai airport & its environs

The serene Sabarmati river running through Ahmedabad

Jaipur: The land of palaces - now getting modern

The heart of Bengaluru: Vidhan Soudha

Mysore: Bangalore's royal cousin

Heart of New Delhi during the parade

The sparkling clean Delhi metro

Heart of Chennai in lush greenery

Chennai's iconic Marina beach

Chennai's southern skyline - not as good as other Indian metropolis but getting better

Kochi's aspirations to enter as a Tier-1 Metropolis

Hyderabad center around the Char Minar

Rapidly growing skyline of Hyderabad:

Kolkata - the old capital of India

Kolkata's Vidaysagar Setu

Heart of India's former summer capital - Shimla

Chandigarh: One of India's most planned cities

Gangtok: The serene northeastern city

Jodhpur: India's blue city

Chennai's Anna Memorial

New Delhi's Lotus Temple to rival the Taj

The Yamuna Expressway to Agra.

New 8-laned expressways of Hyderabad

Chennai's Kathipara junction

India's new highways.

India is moving. Not one or two cities, but the whole nation. By not looking at the pictures above we get the distorted view that India is not progressing.

(SOURCE - VIA E-MAIL OF COL PRAKASH RAO (RETD) 

REMBERING KARGIL HEROES

On the day of the 16th anniversary of India's victory in the 1999 Kargil War, also called Vijay Diwas, TIMES NOW salutes the exceptional gallantry and devotion of the young braveheart soldier who fought for our future and laid his life around battle fields in Kargil. Take a look at the stories of bravehearts to name a few - Captain Vijayant Thapar, Captain Manoj Pandey, Captain Vikram Batra - who laid down their lives for the nation. Their stories are of unmatched saga of bravery, gallantry, & devotion to duty well beyond the call of duty. The Kargil war, which began in May 1999, lasted for more than two months before Pakistani soldiers, a bulk of them drawn from its Northern Light Infantry, and irregulars withdrew from the mountain tops they had occupied overlooking the Srinagar-Leh highway. In the conflict, the Indian Army lost 490 officers, soldiers and jawans. TIMES NOW's Anand Narasimhan brings you Kargil Vijay Diwas celebrations from Drass. The TIMES NOW crew travelled from Srinagar to Zoji La Pass to the Drass War Memorial, and also visited Sando Top and Kargil Battle School. This is the celebration to mark the 16th anniversary of the 1999 Kargil War. Anand speaks with soldiers manning the Sando Top which is close to Tiger Hill, instructors & soldiers at the Kargil Battle School, and also daredevil bikers. The celebrations also include the glorious beating retreat which is followed by the families of martyrs lighting the lamp and wreath laying by Lt. Gen DS Hooda, GOC, Nothern Command. (SOURCE- TIMES NOW) vIA E-MAIL OF BRIG NARINDER DHAND (vETERAN)

Ex-servicemen participate in marathon to demand implementation of OROP scheme

• onduct rally at Jantar Mantar to celebrate Kargil Vijay Diwas
• Vijay Diwas celebrations to kick start in Drass tomorrow
• Vijay Diwas celebrations bring sleepy Drass town to life
• Parrikar pays tribute to Kargil martyrs at Amar Jawan Jyoti
• Modi pays tribute to Kargil martyrs

Hundreds of ex-servicemen organized a marathon in the national capital to reiterate their demand for implementation of the One Rank, One Pension (OROP) scheme on the occasion of 16th anniversary of Kargil Vijay Diwas today.The marathon was held from Dhaula Kuan area to India Gate.

An ex-serviceman, who participated in the marathon, said they will keep fighting for their rights till their demands are not met. "We are fighting for our rights. One Rank, One Pension is our right, which we will get it. We have waited patiently for a long time. Now, we are going to come on the roads and if army comes on the road, problem is going to come with the country, country will disintegrate. So, we must make sure that we get our rights. After all in peace or war we have been coming to your help, but you media people have never covered us. That is why it is not known to people what we are fighting for," he said.

Many civilians and families of ex-servicemen also participated in the marathon.

"As you know, 16 years back Indian soldiers had fought Pakistani intruders in which 527 soldiers lost their lives. So, on its 16th anniversary our ex- servicemen are organizing a solidarity march where they are demanding the implementation of One Rank, One Pension scheme. They have been demanding this scheme for the last 40 years. They have also protested at the Jantar Mantar. So, this marathon is to support them," said Ankit Gupta, a civilian, who participated in the marathon.

The One Rank, One Pension scheme has been a long-standing demand of ex-servicemen. It seeks to ensure that a uniform pension is paid to defence personnel, who retire at the same rank with the same length of service, irrespective of their date of retirement.

(Source - Business Standard)