Tribune News Service
New Delhi, August 25
Talks between the government and
representatives of the retired veterans of the forces to break the One Rank One
Pension (OROP) impasse remained inconclusive tonight. “The agitation will
continue as it is,” Major General Satbir Singh (retd) of Indian Ex-Servicemen
Movement said after the talks.
Late in the evening, a group of
retired soldiers met Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag. The veterans
refused to make public the content of the talks and the offer, if any, made by
the government to call off the agitation.
There have been hectic backroom
discussions for the past two days. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has
briefed Prime Minister Narendra Modi whose office is handling the final
nitty-gritty of the calculations. In the corridors of powers at South Block
here, there is a hush-hush talk that the OROP could be announced any day now. A
similar expectation was raised before the PM’s Independence Day address.
The government has opened several
backchannels with the veterans who are demanding that the OROP be
implemented as per the Bhagat Singh Koshiyari Committee report in Parliament.
The forthcoming golden jubilee
celebrations of the 1965 India-Pakistan war might bring the biggest
embarrassment for the government as the veterans have refused invitations for
the event.
The ongoing agitation at Jantar
Mantar aggravated today with one more veteran, on fast-unto-death, being
hospitalised even as two started their own fast-unto-death.
Havaldar Ashok Singh Chauhan (retd)
was taken to the Army Research and Referral (R&R) hospital in South Delhi
after he suffered “muscle atrophy”. He is the second veteran in as many days to
be hospitalised.
Havaldar Major Singh (retd), who is
on hunger strike since August 16, refused medical check-up. Two more veterans —
Major Pyar Chand (retd) and Naik Uday Singh Rawat (retd) — joined the
fast-unto-death protest, which entered its ninth day today.
The protest for early implementation
of the OROP at Jantar Mantar is on for the past 73 days.
In a twist, “Voice of Ex-Servicemen
Society”, a group of retired jawans and other ranks, started a parallel protest
during which they accused the “Union Front of Ex-Servicemen” (UFESM), the main
organisation leading the OROP protest, of being an “officers’ group”.
The new
group claimed that their interest was not protected by the UFESM while the
talks with the government were on. The UFESM rubbished the allegation.
