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Appreciate Soldiers Sacrifices: Defence ministry had recommended capping tuition fee reimbursement for children of martyrs at a paltry Rs 10000 per month, Nirmala Sitharaman to take final call<\/i><\/p>\n
Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP continue to claim that its only the saffron party that respects and takes care of members of India\u2019s Armed Forces and their kin, a decision by the Union defence ministry to cap reimbursement of tuition and hostel fee of children of martyrs at a paltry Rs 10000 per month has irked Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba.<\/p>\n
The Chief of Naval Staff, Sunil Lanba, has now sought to remind Union defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman of the sacrifices made by defence personnel for the country and urged her to withdraw the cap on educational concession for children. Lanba is also the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff committee which includes the Army and Air Force chiefs.<\/p>\n
Lanba\u2019s letter to Sitharaman comes after requests by several ex-servicemen, including Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, for withdrawing the defence ministry\u2019s\u00a0September 13<\/span><\/span>\u00a0decision of capping the fund for children of martyrs and those soldiers who had been disabled while in the line of duty went unheeded.<\/p>\n In his letter to Nirmala Sitharaman, Admiral Lanba said: \u201cthe provision of educational concession to their (defence personnels’) wards is a small gesture to recognise their commitment to the defence of the country.\u201d He urged Sitharaman to recognise the \u201csupreme sacrifice made by the defence personnel of the country\u201d and added: \u201cthis small gesture (of lifting the cap on fee reimbursement) would assure the families of our brave women and men that the nation cares for them and their sacrifices are truly appreciated by the government.\u201d<\/p>\n Admiral Lanba\u2019s letter seems to have finally shaken the Union defence ministry out of its slumber.<\/p>\n A defence ministry official told reporters on Tuesday that the ministry \u201cis seized of the matter\u201d. Sitharaman too has finally conceded that the decision that had been approved by the Union cabinet led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was \u201churting\u201d the defence personnel and their kin and that she will \u201ctake a look at the issue again.\u201d However, Sitharaman qualified her comments by adding that theSeptember 13<\/span><\/span>\u00a0order by the Department of Ex-servicemen Welfare \u2013 which falls under the Union defence ministry \u2013 which was okayed by the Modi cabinet was \u201cbased on the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission.\u201d<\/p>\n As per estimates, around 3,400 children of armed forces personnel have been impacted by the decision.<\/p>\n The decision has predictably caused an outrage among defence personnel as well as political leaders, including those usually aligned with the BJP \u2013 like Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar. Even former Army chief and now a minister of state in Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s council of ministers, General (retired) VK Singh has opposed his government decision and urged Sitharaman for a review.<\/p>\n The scheme for government bearing the cost of education of ex-servicemen\u2019s children was announced in the Lok Sabha during then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi\u2019s Congress regime on December 18, 1971 \u2013 two days after the Pakistani forces surrendered in Dhaka after the India-Pakistan war that led to the liberation of Bangladesh. It was formally rolled out in early 1972.<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Appreciate Soldiers Sacrifices: Defence ministry had recommended capping tuition fee reimbursement for children of martyrs at a paltry Rs 10000 per month, Nirmala Sitharaman to take final call Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP continue to claim that its only the saffron party that respects and takes care of members of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":33522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497],"tags":[2275,1224,1399,18674],"yst_prominent_words":[10650,33691,4070,19749,33694,33695,33690,6625,6619,3710,29186,33697,33692,4396,6620,6618,33698,33693,33689,34504],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Lanba-Sitharaman.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33519"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33519"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=33519"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=33519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}