BJP govt encashing valour of armed forces personnel for vote politics: Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury

Speaking during the Zero Hour, Chowdhury said the previous Congress-led UPA government had on February 17, 2014 promised to implement OROP as per the recommendations of the Bhagat Singh Koshyari Committee. The present government believes in encashing their valour for vote politics but when it comes to giving back it forgets them, he charged.

The government recently opposed the plea in the Supreme Court by ex-servicemen for an automatic review of OROP, he said.

The ex-servicemen association had sought implementation of the OROP as recommended by the Committee with an automatic annual revision, instead of the current policy of periodic review once in five years.

However, the Court earlier this month upheld the central government’s decision on OROP for defence forces and said that it does not find any constitutional infirmity in the manner in which it is being implemented.

It directed that the pending re-fixation exercise of OROP, which has not been done due to pendency of matter before the court after the expiry of five years, should be carried out from July 1, 2019, and arrears be paid to the pensioners in three months.

D M Kathir Anand (DMK) demanded that the Central government should extend GST compensation to states by a couple of years.

Tamil Nadu would suffer revenue loss of about Rs 20,000 crore if the compensation is not extended beyond five years, he said.

Under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) law, states were guaranteed to be compensated bi-monthly for any loss of revenue in the first five years of GST implementation from July 1, 2017.

C P Joshi (BJP) demanded that the government should include Rajasthani language in the 8th schedule of the Constitution as it is spoken by about four crore of the population. Currently, the 8th schedule has 22 languages spoken in India.