The decision comes in the wake of criticism drawn by the centre over 7th Pay Commission’s slab-based system recommendation, after which the Ministry of Defence had asked the Anomaly Committee to look into the matter and present its report. Back in July 2018, last year, the defence personnel were assured that the Anomaly Committee will soon give its recommendations to the MOD and until then they will receive the disability or war injury pension as per the existing percentage system.
Now that the Ministry of Defence has decided to fix minimum pension of Rs.18,000 for disability or war injury of the armed forces, the same will be payable with retrospective effect from 1st January 2016, onwards to defence pensioners and defence family pensioners.
The Ministry of Defence with its approval from Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman confirmed this development and tweeted, “With approval from Smt @nsitharaman, it has been decided that the disability/war injury pension, special family pension and liberalised family pension shall be minimum Rs 18,000 per month for Defence Forces pensioners/family pensioners, with affect from 1/1/2016.”
The Modi Government seems to be clearing pending demands of central government employees over 7CPC recommendations, one at a time, before the Budget 2019 and General Elections 2019. This positive development for the defence personnel gives a new ray of hope to lacs of central government employees who’ve long requested the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) to raise the minimum salary to Rs.26,000 from the current Rs. 18,000/- besides hiking the fitment factor to 3.68 times from the prevalent 2.57 times.