PM Narendra Modi lying about OROP, says Rahul Gandhi

NEW DELHI: Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi has stepped up the agitation over the One-Rank-One-Pension issue by asking the Prime Minister to “stop lying” about Orop implementation and alleged that the government had only done “a pension enhancement.”

During a meeting with a group of ex-servicemen at the Congress office in New Delhi on Friday, Gandhi pointed to one of them standing next to him and said, “when these ex-servicemen explained the whole issue, they said Orop is not about money, it is about honour and justice”

Even as Gandhi held a meeting, the AICC is learnt to have directed all Pradesh Congress Committees to organise agitations and hold candle-light demonstrations across states, demanding Orop implementation.

The Opposition will also raise the issue, if not resolved soon, during the upcoming Parliament session.

After his interactions with exservicemen, Gandhi told the media: “What the Prime Minister says is One Rank-One Pension is actually pension enhancement and not Orop. The PM should stop lying on the issue.

Charging the Modi government with “neglecting jeans and farmers and only favouring big industrialists” Gandhi said “the government has not given respect and the right which is due to soldiers.

If it had, why have these ex-servicemen been protesting for the last 509 days at Jantar Mantar?

Orop is the right of the armed forces personnel and the government will have to give it…The government has also done things like reducing the disability pension.”

Gandhi who was detained thrice during the past two days, said: “I was detained. It does not matter.

But how does one justify the police dragging and beating up family members of a deceased exservicemen when his body was still in hospital?”

Flanking Gandhi, former defence minister A K Antony said the UPA regime had accepted and ordered Orop and demanded that the Modi government must immediately implement it “without any dilution.”