Rejecting Congress’ claim that disability pension for armed forces has been reduced, the government on Monday said it has rather been "significantly increased" in the case of 90 per cent of the personnel as per the 7th Pay Commission recommendations.
The increase in disability pension ranges from around 14 per cent to 30 per cent among the personnel below officer rank/junior commissioned officers (PBORs/JCOs), sources said.
"On the issue of disability pensions for the armed forces, there is a lot of negative reporting going around by the usual suspects," the sources said, hours after the opposition Congress attacked the government quoting media reports.
"There was a dramatized article in the media today describing how the pensions of army personnel who participated in the surgical strike get cut drastically if they got severely injured during the surgical strike. But the fact is, that the disability pensions for war injury cases for personnel who have been invalidated have not been touched, according to the recommendations of the 7th pay commission," they added.
The sources said media reports have "tried to create an impression, by selective misquoting, that the disability pensions have been slashed."
"The truth is that the disability pension for non-battle cases has increased for majority of the personnel," they insisted.
The government has accepted recommendations of the 7th pay commission to ensure increase in the disability pensions for majority of the personnel, the sources said, adding the resolution based on the 7th pay commission recommendations has been passed.
The details and the actual order are yet to be issued, they said.
"The increase in disability pensions ranges from around 14 per cent to 30 per cent among the PBORs/JCOs. In fact the disability pension of almost 90 per cent of the armed forces personnel have been significantly increased," the sources said.
Giving an idea about how the disability pensions will "actually increase, once the recommendations of the 7th pay commission are implemented", the sources said for Sepoy, it has increased from Rs 9282 to Rs 12,000, for Havildar, it has increased from Rs 10,542 to Rs 12,000 and for Naik, it has increased from Rs 9680 to Rs 12000.
Congress had questioned the decision to "drastically" reduce the disability pension of the jawans and demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah apologise to the nation for their "vote garnering" exercise on surgical strikes calling it a "worst crime".
Party's chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala was also scathing in his criticism of the government for "failing to do justice" with both the farmers and the jawans.
He demanded withdrawl of the "Tughlaqi" order of "drastically reducing" the disability pension of the jawans and accused the government of not taking "effective" action on the one rank-one pension issue.
"Doing politics over the sacrifice and valour of the armed forces is the worst crime," Surjewala told reporters.
He said the surgical strikes should not be made a "vote garnering exercise" in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and some other states.
(With PTI inputs)
