Kalimpong June 20, 2015:

Hundred of retired military personnel  today to send a strong message to NDA government to implement the “one rank one pension” (OROP) scheme, took out a rally in Kalimpong  town today.

The rally started from Damber chowk saw ex army carrying placard to implement the scheme soon.

The rally went to SDO office which saw no presence of official due to Holiday. The ex army decided to submit a memo to SDO on Monday whereas a memo demanding OROP schme soon was sent to Defence Minister by fax today.

Col D.K Pradhan, told that the NDA government has said several times it is committed to the OROP scheme but Prime Minister Narendra Modi and defence minister Parrikar have not set a timeframe for rolling it out.

"This system of OROP has been pending for many years. Whenever the elections come, lots of promises are made by various parties that it will be executed soon"he added.

 The OROP scheme is aimed at ensuring that all retired personnel, who have the same rank and the length of service, receive the same amount of pension, irrespective of their date of retirement. Under the existing policy, military personnel who retired before 2006 receive less pension than those who retired later.

The OROP scheme has been a long-standing demand of nearly three million retired military personnel. More than 600,000 war widows are also expected to benefit from the scheme.

Before last year’s general election, the Congress-led UPA government allocated Rs 500 crore for the OROP scheme. Following its electoral victory, the BJP-led NDA government increased the allocation to Rs 1,000 crore.

But experts have said the actual requirement for immediately implementing the scheme could be more than Rs 8,000 crore.