BJP president JP Nadda flagged off his party’s “Shaheed Samman Yatra” from the defence personnel-dominated Sawad village in poll-bound Uttarakhand on Monday and accused the Congress of misleading the armed forces over their demand for “One Rank One Pension” for decades.
Addressing a public meeting in Sawad on the occasion of the launch of the yatra, Mr. Nadda said no defence equipment were purchased for over 20 years when the Congress was in power at the Centre and the process of strengthening and modernising the armed forces began only when Prime Minister Narendra Modi took over the reins of power.
“Under the leadership of Modi, the country has bought 36 Rafale fighters , 28 Apache helicopters, 15 Chinook helicopters, 145 ultra-light howitzers, 1.86 crore bulletproof jackets and five lakh AK-203 rifles,” he said.
Accusing the Congress of misleading the armed forces on the issue of OROP for decades, the BJP president said the government led by the party made a budgetary allocation of a paltry ₹500 crore for OROP for the sake of appearances in 2013.
It was only after Mr. Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014 that efforts to implement OROP were started in right earnest, he said.
“He spent ₹42,000 crore to implement OROP, from which 20.6 lakh soldiers in the country and 1.16 lakh in Uttarakhand benefitted,” the BJP leader said.
