To Dated: 06 Aug 2011 Dr.

Manmohan Singh Honble Prime Minister of India 10 Parliament House New Delhi -11 GOVT APATHY TOWARDS DEFENCE VETERANS : SERIOUS ANOMALIES IN PAY AND PENSIONS NOT ADDRESSED

Dear Sh. Manmohan Singh Jee,

1. We the Defence Veterans once again wish to approach you for the resolution of serious anomalies in the pay and pensions of Defence Veterans and request you to kindly address our genuine demands. One Rank One Pension 2. This demand is over three decades old but has become the most serious grievance of the defence veterans specially after the 6th CPC award. One Rank One Pension for us means removal of the gap in pensions of various ranks of the Defence Services of pre and post 2006 retirees and not bridging of the gap as being stated by the RM and some bureaucrats who are detailed to sit on various committees on the issues of Defence Personnel without having any representations from the Defence Personnel. You are perhaps aware that the department of ESW (Ex Servicemen Welfare) set up in the MoD also does not have any representation from the Defenc Services serving or retired. The bureaucrats manning the ESW have done nothing to resolve the serious anomalies. You are also aware that Defence Services have a pyramidical rank based structure and sensitivities of each rank which is earned with great amount of efforts & hard work need to be respected. How can a Sepoy draw more pension than a Havildar and a Lt Col more pension than a Major General just because the Sepoy and Lt Col retired later than 01 Jan 2006. Also Defence Personnel of the same rank and same length of service are drawing different pensions with a differential upto 63 percent. This type of pension policy has totally destroyed the rank based structure of the Defence Forces. 3. Honble Prime Minister, you are also aware that over 85 percent of the Defence Personnel are compulsorily retired at the ages of 35 - 37 years and majority of officers also retire at the age of 54 years only. 0.02 percent very two inadequate. You are also aware that while the three assured career progression are available to Central Govt Civilians Employees, these are denied to the Defence Personnel because of compulsory early retirement and deep selections system.

Consequently while 100 percent of IAS, IPS, IFS and grade A services reach the HAG/ HAG + grade and thus enjoy OROP, the defence personnel are denied the same. To add to the woes of Defence Personnel, the non functional upgrade authorized to civilians employees has not been made applicable to the defence personnel. This has resulted in serious disadvantage to the Defence Personnel. 4. Mr. Prime Minister, the biggest blunder committed by the then Govt was in 1973 when the 3rd CPC clubbed Defence Personnel with the civilian employees. The bureaucrats succeeded in downgrading and degrading the military in status, in service prospects benefits and emolument packages. Some examples of discrimination against Defence Personnel vis--vis civilian employees are as under:(a) Non Functional Upgrades for Civilian Employee. (b) Broad banding of Disability Pension For Civilian, (c) Special Incentives for Civilian Employees for posting to difficult areas. (d) Special Incentive to Widows of Civilian Employees. (e) Self Determined Performance Based Incentives applicable to Civilian Employees. (f) Pay & Pension Edge of Defence Personnel available in the sixties has been demolished. (g) Year wise Parity/Edge of Defence Personnel vis--vis Civilian Counterparts not Maintained. 5. There is urgent and strong need to have full review of Pay, pensions, status, in service prospects/benefits to reestablish the edge of Defence personnel over the civilian counterparts. While the permanent solution would be to go back to pre 3 CPC structure of Standard Military Pensions with the clear differential edge which existed between the Defence personnel and the civilian employees, as an interim measure OROP, the most genuine demand pending for the three decades needs to be sanctioned at the earliest. It will be pertinent to mention, while the pension of the highest Civilian Official was Rs 416.50 pm in 1961, the pension of COAS was Rs 1000 pm/. However in 2006 pensions of both have been pegged at Rs 45000 pm. This means while the pension of highest Civilian employees has increased 108 times, that of Defence personnel only 45 times. There is no justification for this. It is a grave injustice. This needs to be corrected through a separate commission or immediate commission for Armed Forces. As an interim measure, OROP be sanctioned at the earliest with following provisions:(a) Same Rank, Same Length of Service Must get same pension irrespective of the date of retirement. (b) No senior rank defence personnel to ever get less pension than his irrespective the date of retirement. junior rank

Widows Pensions 6. As you might be aware, the Cabinet Secretarys Committee was constituted in 2009 to specifically examine the issue of one rank one pension (OROP) for military pensioners. While not backing the demand for OROP, the Committee had recommended some enhancement of pensions for personnel other than commissioned officers. This recommendation has since been implemented. 7. For some reason, the pension received by Service widows remained uncovered by the enhancement recommended by the Cabinet Secretarys Committee. This came as a great shock to the entire community of Ex Servicemen as the neediest segment of pensioners was deprived of even this partial enhancement. We wrote to the Honble PM. Two different replies came. One spoke of pension being related to the last pay drawn and hence the inability to give it in cases where the Ex Serviceman had passed away. The second reply simply said the widows were not covered because the Cabinet Secretarys Committee had not recommended their inclusion. An other letter was written to the Honble PM by Lt Gen Raj Kadyan, Chairman IESM requesting review; no reply has come. 8. Singling out the hapless widows has been very unfortunate and betrays lack of sensitivity on the part of the government. It has also caused consternation among the veterans and has become a highly emotive issue. The pensions of widows need to be enhanced at the earliest. Rank Pay Anomaly of 4th Pay Commission 9. (a) To partially compensate defence service officers, for their unusual and harsh conditions of service, the Govt of India approved the 4th CPC recommendation of Rank Pay, to be added to the Basic Pay of officers of ranks Capt Brig. This would have had a cascading effect on even Maj Gens and Lt Gens. This would have in turn also impacted on the pension of Defence Services Officers. (b) Despite the above approval, in the execution stage, this advantage was neutralised by a bureaucratic manipulation, by first deducting and then adding rank pay. Consequently not only the desired increase, approved by the GOI based on the IVth CPC, not actually occur and the pay remained unchanged, but infact resulted in the Basic Pay being correspondingly lowered from earlier level. This lowering had a detrimental effect on each ranks relative equation to other services, being lowered etc. but also had cascading effect on successive pay commissions. (c) The above anomaly was taken to court by one Maj Dhanapalan. The Court ruled in his favour as did the Kerla High Court and the Supreme Court. His dues were upwardly revised and he received arrears of his pay and pension. (d) It would have been natural and within tenets of fair play for the Govt to magnanimously apply this judgement to all similarly placed officers. This unfortunately did not happen.

(e) The Retired Defence Officer Association (RDOA) an ESM body approached the courts for application of above judgement to all similarly placed officers. The Supreme Court has ruled in favour of the RDOA and directed their payment of all arrears plus interest @ 6% be paid to all similarly placed officers. (f) The government has not only not implemented the court judgement but also is delaying the implementation of Rank Pay by launching infructuous appeals for revisions of the above ruling. Govts Scant Respect For the Judgements Given in Favour of Defence Personnel by various Courts of the Country,

10. With serious concern, we wish to apprise the Honble PM that over 90 percent of the 4000 cases filed by the Defence Personnel in Armed Forces Tribunals were decided in favour of them. But the Govt has not implemented the judgements in favour of the Defence Personnel. Instead, it has been filing appeals in the higher judiciary against these judgements. Even the judgements given in favour of Defnece personnel by the Honble Supreme Court have not been honoured. It is pertinent to mention that in other countries like USA, UK, Canada etc, as a convention the Court judgement given in favour of Defence Personnel is not contested. There is need to give due respect to the judgements given by the AFTs and other higher judiciary.

Major Cause of Anomalies in Pay and Pensions of Defence Personnel

11. Dear Prime Minister, You must try and analyse as to why no order of GOI pertaining to the Ex Servicemen in India comes out without large number of anomalies? Answer is very simple the persons sitting in your so called Ex Servicemen Welfare Department of the Ministry of Defence know nothing about the three Defence Services and in particular the problems of retired Defence Pensioners and their dependents. The present ESW Department issues one letter to resolve an anomaly and creates many more anomalies by issue of this letter. Unless the ESW Department is constituted of the serving and retired Defence personnel of the three services these anomalies will never be resolved. The Head of the ESW Department should be a serving Lt Gen/Maj Gen or equivalent from one of the Services in rotation. At the next level we should have three serving Brig and equivalent, one from each Service. All remaining staff should be retired Defence personnel, who should be permitted to serve upto the age of 62 years.

12. The dissatisfaction of the Defence Veterans has got very serious implications for the security of the country and therefore I implore you that serious note be taken of the same and the grievances of the veterans be addressed soonest as suggested above.

5 13. By now it has become amply clear beyond any doubt that for reasons not known to us, the bureaucracy is hostile towards the needs of Defence Personnel and as the matter is quite complex, we request that one hour may be allotted to us to present our case to you personally. With Kind Regards, Yours Sincerely,

Maj Gen (Retd) Satbir Singh, SM Indian ESM Movement Mobile: 9312404269, 0124-4110570 Email: satbirsm@yahoo.com Copy to :Sh. A.K. Antony, Defence Minister, 104, South Block, New Delhi - For information and action please.

Gen Vijay Kumar Singh, PVSM, AVSM, YSM, ADC -With request for collective intervention Chief of the Army Staff to address the serious anomalies and Integrated HQs of Armed Forces (Army) consequent injustice to the defence South Block, New Delhi-110011 veterans. Admiral Nirmal Kumar Verma, PVSM, AVSM, ADC Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee and Chief of the Naval Staff Integrated HQs of Armed Forces (Navy) South Block, New Delhi-110011 Air Chief Marshal Norman Anil Kumar Browne, PVSM, AVSM, VM Chief of the Air Staff Integrated HQs of Armed Forces (Air Force) Vayu Bhawan, New Delhi-110011 -do-

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