MILITARY PENSIONS: Letter to Prime Minister

Dear Hon’ble Prime Minister,

I refer to my letter of 14 Oct 09 along with which I had enclosed a joint letter of the same date, by heads of four major ex servicemen organizations. I regret to say that till date I have not received even an acknowledgement of the letter, leave alone a considered response from your kind self. We, the Ex Service Men, know that you are an extremely busy person and cannot devote time to answering every letter that you receive, but there are enough people in the PMO who will jump to act at even an indication from you. As they did when Mr Mahesh Bhat wrote about his son Rahul to you, by acknowledging his communication within three days.

Our letter was written only 7 weeks ago and being from ESM who have no utility (like spent cartridges!) can obviously be ignored, while Mr Bhat can bad mouth the government and so has to be kept quiet! The lack of response from your office gives us to believe that either, our communications are not being brought to your notice by interested parties or, the government has no intention to alleviate the grievances of the ESM. The message to the ESM seems clear that unless you can hold a threat to the government it does not care to listen to, wit, the Jat agitation, sugarcane farmers agitation and now Mr Mahesh Bhat, whether the grievance is genuine or not! Please, Sir, I beseech you not to send this dangerous message to the ESM.

I wonder if you are aware that the announcement made by you from the ramparts of the Red Fort on 15 Aug 09 that pensions of ESM are being revised, based on the promise of Rs 2,140 crores in the Jul 09 budget, is still on files only. Even though it was not expected to be as per the request of ESM for One Rank One Pension, the non implementation of the truncated promise shows the sincerity of the Government.

Hon’ble Prime Minister, we the ESM have been hoping against hopes that your government will do justice to the ESM. Please do not disappoint us.

Sir, I wished you a Happy Diwali at the end of my letter of 14 Oct 09, I now wish you a very happy New Year.

With warmest regards.
Yours sincerely
Lt Gen S K Bahri (Retd)
Convenor

Dr Manmohan Singh
Hon’ble Prime Minister of India
7 Race Course Road
New Delhi 110 011

CC
Shri AK Antony
Hon’ble Minister of Defence
Ministry of Defence
Room No104, South Block
New Delhi 110 011

Shri Pranab Mukherji
Hon’ble Minister of Finance
Ministry Of Finance
Room No 134, North Block
New Delhi 110 011