Agencies
New Delhi, Dec 5: Military personnel forced to quit service due to injuries in operations should be granted 50 per cent pension immediately after retirement, Defence Minister A K Antony has directed, soon after a former commando alleged he was not given such benefits even a year after leaving NSG. He also directed that in case of invaliding from service and war injury cases, immediately 50 per cent of the pension should be granted to the retiring defence personnel, Ministry officials said here. The directions were issued by the minister in a meeting to review pension-related problems faced by ex servicemen and invalidated soldiers. The development comes soon after former NSG commando Surender Singh, who had fought terrorists in the 26/11 attack and was invalidated from service after he became medically unfit, claimed that he was not being given pension and post retirement benefits by the government. Antony also asked the Army and the Navy to adopt the e-tracking process of the IAF to keep a check on such former personnel who need help and also to fix timelines for giving them their post retirement dues, they said. "Antony said the war injury and invalidation cases must be taken care off on a priority basis and pension officials should be sensitised to deal with such cases," they said.
He also directed the three services to prepare a common checklist of documents required for grant of pension and to be submitted to pension authorities, they said.
Antony also asked authorities to take immediate actions on the pension-related cases settled either by the Armed Forces Tribunal or the high courts.
In a meeting to review the pension-related problems of the defence personnel, he also directed the officials to issue orders for the Rs 2,300 crore pensionary benefits cleared by the government by the end of this month.
The officials have been asked to ensure the disbursement of these funds by March 31 next year, they said. |
