After the alleged suicide by an ex-army man, Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) tried their level best to derive political mileage out of One Rank One Pension (OROP) issue. Congress Vice President and Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia tried to barge into the hospital on the pretext of meeting the kin of the former army personnel. But all that they communicated was the message that they were trying to play politics over this issue. So politicians should immediately stop playing politics over OROP as the truth has come out. The saga however fails to die. An ex-soldier commits suicide. Belonging to Haryana he was much ahead of his time when he got his village free from the menace of open defecation eight years ago which was much before the Union government could even conceive the concept. Before the suicide he had remained a Sarpanch of the village. Is it that he just being an ex-soldier his suicide is being linked to the issue? Whatever may be the reasons too much of politics has been played over the dead. Political parties should desist from playing dirty politics on such issues and the politicians should get themselves familiar with the issue first before taking to the streets to gain sympathy from the people. There are still some kinks in the plan that needs to be ironed out, and this should be done through discussion and debate between the Government and the veterans, in a time-bound manner. A major point of dispute that emerged after the OROP announcement in September, 2015 was the eligibility of veterans who had taken ‘voluntary retirement’. The military does not have the kind of voluntary retirement system which is available to civilians – instead, it has a premature retirement system, which is a different mechanism altogether. But this confusion was also quickly cleared by the Prime Minister himself when he said that veterans who had retired prematurely will not be left out. The second point of contention was the revision of OROP every five years to equalise pensions with ranks. The veterans want a revision every one or two years, which, frankly is a maximalist demand that will lead to an administrative nightmare and a very expensive one at that. The Congress-led Opposition has expectedly lent its weight to the sulking leaders of the veteran community but there’s no looking away from the fact that for much of the 42 years, that the Armed Forces have been demanding OROP, it was the Congress that was in power but did precious little to resolve the issue.
