Rahul who is on a daylong whirlwind tour of the hill state during which he will address two more campaign meetings in Almora and Kashipur, said he shared a special bonding with Uttarakhand where his great grandfather Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru spent long periods in jails and where he and his father Rajiv Gandhi did their early schooling.
The Nehru-Gandhi scion said it was due to this sense of bonding with the state that he took up the vexed issue of one rank one pension for army in which a large number of people of the state serve and took it to its logical conclusion with the kind cooperation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
“Many armymen from different states including Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand met me in New Delhi with a request to fulfil this long standing demand of theirs (one rank one pension). I took the matter to prime minister Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and other party leaders.
“Though many thought it would be difficult, both the Prime Minister and Sonia ji said howsoever difficult it may be, it must be done in the next theree days and it happened, he said.
