Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who was detained when he tried to meet the family of retired Army man who had committed suicide over the delay in implementing the One Rank One Pension Scheme, was released after five hours. He later said, "[Prime Minister Narendra] Modiji has lied to the entire country saying that OROP has been implemented." The chief minister is scheduled to visit the former army man's village to meet his family on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the Congress released a video in which the deceased ex-soldier Ram Kishan Grewal’s son accuses the police of assaulting him when he tried to meet Rahul Gandhi, reported NDTV. The policemen, however, said Grewal was detained after he joined Aam Aadmi Party workers to protest outside the hospital.
Earlier on Wednesday, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi was detained twice for trying to meet the family of the deceased soldier. He was first detained, along with Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and another AAP legislator. Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia was also detained with Gandhi. All of them were later released.
Both Gandhi and Sisodia blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the police action. "Naya Hindustan ban raha hai bhaiya… this is Modijis India... I was not allowed to visit Grewal's kin because of government's non-democratic mentality," said Gandhi. Sisodia said on Twitter, "A former soldier commits suicide due to actions of the central government and I get detained just for talking to his family. This is too much."
The Bharatiya Janata Party countered the accusations levelled by Gandhi, Kejriwal and Sisodia. They said the Opposition leaders were indulging in “politics over death”, The Indian Express reported. "The suicide of ex-serviceman Ram Kishan Grewal is unfortunate and our sympathies are with his family. What is even more unfortunate is the politics over his death. As far as OROP is concerned, the government has fulfilled its commitment and ex-servicemen are benefiting from it,” said BJP’s national secretary Shrikant Sharma.
In his suicide note, Grewal had said that he was killing himself for the country's soldiers. His son said he had called his family and informed them of his decision to take his life because "the government had failed to fulfil their demands" related to the OROP scheme.
The Defence Ministry had reinstated the OROP scheme in September 2015, more than 43 years after the formula for calculating pensions for those retiring from India's armed forces was terminated by the Indira Gandhi government. It formally notified the OROP scheme for more than 24 lakh ex-servicemen and six lakh war widows in the country on November 8, 2015.
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