POORNIMA NIRALAY

Awaiting ‘one rank one pension’

Shri Narendra Modi, the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP, while addressing a rally at New Delhi, in which a few bigwigs from defence pensioners were present on the dias, had announced that he would certainly fulfill the ‘One Rank One Pension’ demand of pensioners were the BJP to come to power in 2014. Naturally, he was greeted with wild and resounding applause!

It would be wrong to entreat my fellow pensioners (they are citizens first, pensioners latter) to hold any brief for the BJP or the Congress or any other party. About 30 lakh GOI pensioners are waiting for more than 10 years for a miracle to happen, to get OROP.  About two lakh LIC, RBI and bank pensioners are fighting legal battles in various High Courts and in the Supreme Court. All the court judgments delivered during the last 10 years, without exception, are in favour of the pensioners, but the GOI and the managements are playing with the psyche of pensioners, (majority in their 70’s/80’s) to get court cases adjourned unabated on one or the other pretext, on frivolous/flimsy grounds.

It is high time the government at the centre concedes this genuine demand of the beleaguered class of citizens, the pensioners.

(Free Press Journal/07-12-2013.)