Newly appointed Chief of Army Staff General Bipin Rawat on Tuesday appealed the army veterans to call off their protest over One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme while stating that government is trying its best to provide full assistance to them.

“I would like to appeal our veterans who are sitting on a protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to go back to their home. The government is mulling over the OROP issue and trying to give our veterans full assistance,” General Rawat told ANI.

“As far as the OROP is concerned, our army chief veterans and ex-servicemen would have felt that the kind of assistance that they were expecting was not given. But I would like to say that our demand has been fulfilled to a certain extent,” he added..

The OROP scheme, announced in September 2015, is meant to ensure equal pension to servicemen who retired on the same rank and after the same duration of service, regardless of the year of retirement.

However, retired soldiers have been alleging that the government has not addressed their concerns fully about the disparity in pension payments.

The army chief of staff may be committed to support the government’s stand on OROP for obvious reasons. But the fact remains that what the government implemented is something short of OROP which is admitted by the army general himself. The war veterans are naturally fed up with the lame excuses of the government and the delay tactics. So it will be appropriate that the army general advise the government to implement OROP in real terms and then ask the war veterans to call off their agitation.