With the Centre yet to formalise any concrete proposal on One Rank One Pension, the war veterans will start a relay hunger strike in Varanasi, Leh, Ambala and Pune soon.
The agitating ex-servicemen demanding One Rank One Pension have accused the Centre of trying to create a rift between the ranks of retired officers, saying that the government has still not been able to come to the negotiating table with a clean agenda as the protests entered the 81st day.
"People from the government offer one thing and the next day another person comes up with another statement. They are constantly shifting goalpost. There is no clear signal of intent from the government or any concrete proposal," said Anil Kaul, media adviser to the United Front of Ex-Servicemen.
In principle, the war veterans do not want juniors to draw more pension than their seniors. They have rejected the government's proposal to review their pension once in every five years, but are now open to the review happening every two years.
Major General (Retired) Satbir Singh told NDTV, "The implementation has to be from 2014. In principle, they must do a review every year, but just for grace, we are prepared to let the review go up to a maximum of two years."
According to the veterans, the total cost of implementing the scheme will come to Rs 8,294 crores which has been worked out by the three defence service pay cells. The pension equalisation will cost around Rs 33 crore annually.
But with the government yet to formalise any concrete proposal, the war veterans will start a relay hunger strike in Varanasi, Leh, Ambala and Pune soon.
The implementation of the scheme is a promise made by the BJP before last year's general elections. The scheme will give equal pension to servicemen retiring with the same rank regardless of when they retire.
At present, a soldier who retired many years ago is paid far less than someone several ranks junior to him retiring now. The scheme is expected to benefit 30 lakh former soldiers.