Minutes of Weekly Meeting of the Core Committee of TSEWA Held on 12 Feb 2020 at 9.00 am at 143, Vayupuri, Secunderabad- 500 094

The following attended :-

1.  Brig CS Vidyasagar               President            in Chair
2. Cmde Sudheer Parakala        Vice President
3. Col Dr GB Sethi                     General Secretary
4. Lt Col VS Ramana Reddy      Offg Treasurer
5. Hony Capt B Joseph              Joint Secretary
6. Col MJ Ganapathy                 Member
7. Col N Sitaramaiah                  Member
8. Cdr Chandra Shekhar            Member
9. Lt Col Vijai Salins                   Member
10. Maj B Bhikshapathy                Member
11. Smt Rekha Sekhri                  Administrator, TSEWA Blog
12. Lt Col N Ravi Choudhary      Legal Advisor
13. Lt Col RR Sekhri                   In attendance

The President welcomed all present and thanked them for their efforts to attend the meeting.

Mourning on Untimely Demise of Gp Capt CRR Sastry, Joint Secretary, TSEWA. The Core Committee observed two minutes silence to pay respects to (Late) Gp Capt CRR Sastry who passed away on 01 Feb 2020 at Kolkata. We prayed Almighty to rest his soul in peace and give strength to his family members to bear this great loss.

The President then requested the General Secretary to commence the proceedings by giving out his points.

Points from General Secretary

Item No I. Current Issues. The General Secretary spoke on following issues.

(a)   Legal Cases. Gen Secretary informed that petitioners of various legal cases are tired of dysfunctional state of AFTs which has led to abnormal delay in getting judgments. 19 petitioners requested for refund of legal fees and Rs 76,000 was refunded immediately.
OA – 1545/2016: Pension of Nb Sub to Hony Nb Subedars has been postponed indefinitely and Court No 2 of Principal bench, New Delhi wanted the case to be examined by a larger bench. The President immediately spoke to Brig SKS Rana, VSM (Retd), President, Legal Division on this issue. Brig SKS Rana, VSM replied that the larger bench with Chairman of AFT, Justice Sunita Gupta, Judicial member and Air Mshl BBP Sinha, Administrative member has been constituted. Either by end of February 2010 or definitely in month of Mar 2020, the case will be finalised. All the petitioners therefore need not worry on this score. Few more weeks of delay should not lower the morale of the petitioners. Similarly there are signs that all regional benches of AFT also will be fully functional in the near future and all cases of TSEWA filed in various AFTs are likely to be adjudicated and hoped that our petitioners will get justice.

(b)   Interaction of COAS with Veterans. The meeting as scheduled was held on 11 Feb 2020. He requested the President, TSEWA to elaborate on this issue.

(c)   Postponement of Few Cases Filed in Hon’ble Supreme Court.  The General Secretary informed that in spite of best efforts by advocates, few cases like OROP and NFU filed in Hon’ble Supreme Court have been postponed to Mar 2020.

(d)   OROP for PMR Personnel. The Government while sanctioning OROP – 2013 mentioned that those who seek pre mature retirement will not get benefit of OROP. Their pension will only be revised by every Central pay commission after 10 years.

(e)   Central Pension Disbursal System (CPDS).  A number of mails and WhatsApp messages from veterans expressing their apprehension on CPDS. Gen Secy requested the President to throw more light on this important issue affecting pension disbursal of 25 lakh pensioners.

(f)    Auditing of TSEWA Accounts by Chartered Accountant. M/S P Sashidar Reddy and Associates, our chartered accountant carried out a thorough audit of our accounts. There are no negative observations on maintenance of our accounts. This shows how meticulously our accounts are being maintained, thanks to our three staff members who have been working scrupulously. The General Secretary has been overseeing the functioning of the accounts in the absence of Treasurer who is away.  The Interim  Audit Observations will be uploaded on the TSEWA blog.

(g)   Ambulance of ECHS Polyclinic. Few members of TSEWA approached General Secretary to say that the ambulance in use by ECHS Polyclinic, Secunderabad was donated by Army Group Insurance Fund. However diesel and other maintenance expenses have to be taken care of by the polyclinic, which it is unable to meet. Since HQ Telangana and Andhra Sub Area have not been helpful, few members of ECHS like (late) Col MK Veeramani, Col Dr GB Sethi, Brig Raghunath etc have been pooling money to buy diesel for the ambulance. The members of TSEWA requested that Rs 500 per month be donated by TSEWA to purchase diesel for the ambulance.

Decision of the Core Committee. The Core Committee after elaborate discussion directed Maj Dr B Bhikshapathy who is one of the volunteers in ECHS, Polyclinic to meet the OiC ECHS Polyclinic and if no funds are forthcoming then TSEWA to donate Rs 500 per month to ECHS Polyclinic, Secunderabad for a worthy cause.

Item No 2: Points from Cmde Sudheer Parakala, Vice President

(a)   Budget for Charitable Activities for the Quarter March to June 2020. He informed that there are five cases for financial assistance for education of children of ESMs and family pensioners pending with the Charity Division. He requested Treasurer to allocate funds so that these cases can be disposed off.

(b)   Registered Address of TSEWA. When registering TSEWA with the Registrar of Societies, Secunderabad, (Late) Gp Capt CRR Sastry, Joint Secretary, TSEWA had given his own house address as the registered address of TSEWA.
Cmde Sudheer Parakala offered that his house address can be given as registered address of TSEWA. His gesture of was appreciated by all.

Decision of Core Committee. The Core Committee directed Hony Capt B Joseph, Joint Secretary to get the registered address of TSEWA changed to the home address of Cmde Sudheer Parakala  with the Registrar of Societies, Secunderabad.

Item No 3: Point from Maj Dr B Bhikshapathy

Maj Dr B Bhikshapathy wanted to know if there was any way to cut down on expenditure incurred in running the TSEWA office.

General Secretary informed that strict control on expenditure was being maintained. All travel, boarding, lodging expenses of our 4^th AGM at Dehradun on 07 Jul 2019 was paid by individual office bearers to go from their permanent location to Dehradun & back. In fact lowest expenditure was incurred for 4^th AGM at Dehradun. The office located at SBI, Bhaskar Rao Nagar needs to be maintained for housing all the documents. Three staff members who are employed by TSEWA  have become experts on various subjects being dealt by TSEWA and cannot be dispensed with. Therefore, there is no way we can cut down expenditure. The income we get from interest on our fixed deposits of Rs 1 lakh per month which covers our expenditure of Rs 90,000 per month. We are on the other hand are saving Rs 10,000 per month.

Decision of the Core Committee. After hearing various suggestions, the Core Committee directed that since corporate usually have a budget for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), an appeal may be sent to them to contribute to TSEWA.
The President volunteered to make a one page draft appeal and circulate it to all Office bearers of TSEWA and Executive Committee members to further improve the contents

Item No: 4: Points from the President

(a) Veterans meeting with COAS. The President informed that Col Ajit Singh Rana (Retd) President, TSEWA, North Zone, Delhi NCR and Haryana spoke to him on phone on 12 Feb 2020 and gave gist of the meeting. He informed about 10 veterans viz Brig Kartar Singh, President IESL & NCESMO, Maj Gen Satbir Singh, SM (Retd), President, IESM, Maj Gen Ian Cordazo, battle casualty of 1971 war, Lt Col BK Gupta, President of RDOA, Capt Mahajan, President Disabled War Veterans Association, few JCOs and OR attended the meeting with COAS. The meeting commenced at 1430 hrs in the South Block, Army HQ. COAS listened patiently to the grievances expressed by the participants.

On OROP – 2018, Brig Kartar Singh (Retd) explained that the detailed tables and analysis made by Brig CS Vidyasagar (Retd) President, TSEWA disproves claims made by CGDA to the Min of Def (ESW) on OROP – 2018. The analysis clearly brings out the need for implementation of OROP – 2018 as was done for OROP – 2013 without any further delay. The pension obtained from about 800 all ranks of pensioners retired from 2014 to 2018 were analysed. This clearly shows for any rank for same length of service, the pension has been increasing. The contention of CGDA that since 7^th CPC equalised pension, there is no need to implement OROP – 2018 is totally misleading and flagrantly false. The OROP – 2018 should have been implemented w.e.f. Jul 2019 and veterans are feeling disillusioned with the Min of Def (ESW) for abnormal delay.

On hearing this important issue, COAS directed that Brig CS Vidyasagar (Retd) President, TSEWA should make a presentation to members of Adjutant General and his staff, Presidents of few ESM Associations and Representatives of CGDA on OROP – 2018.

(b) Centralised Pension Disbursal System (CPDS). The President informed that he had just sent a concept paper of CPDS along with likely problems pensioners are sure to encounter when the new system is introduced. He stated that any new system needs to be preceded by a pilot project by selecting few ESMs who are already drawing pension to see the problems likely to surface. He stated that there may be errors in data maintained by Central Pension Disbursing Authority (CPDA), leading to pensioners not being paid their pensions. He gave three examples (more may be there) arising out of this situation:

(i)     Mistake in bank Account Number.  If the 11 digit bank account number of pensioner has one wrong digit, then that pensioner will not get his pension. The pension which is undisbursed by the bank will go into suspense account till the mistake is corrected in the bank account number. Till date, the agency to whom the pensioner can approach to get this mistake in account number corrected is not known.  Presently the pensioner can go to Central Pension Processing Centre (CPPC) of his bank and get his grievance redressed

(ii)     Mistake in IFSC. Every branch of every bank has distinct IFSC to identify itself. In case a consolidated RTGS payment is made to the branch and if the IFSC is wrongly mentioned then all pensioners drawing pension from that branch will not get their pension till that mistake is rectified.

 (iii) Mistake Committed Inadvertently. There are hundreds of pensioners with surnames such as Sharma, Choudhary, Rao, Reddy, Malhotra, Saxena, Chawla etc who may have pension account in the same branch. There is a very real possibility that there may be errors in associating the pension with the correct name and rank holder. For no fault of the pensioner, he will be denied his rightful pension.

(c)   Awareness Programme in Kolkata. Maj Gen S N Mukherjee (Retd), President, TSEWA, West Bengal had informed that an awareness programme would be held on first Sunday or second Sunday in Apr 2020, where 100 to 200 pensioners are likely to attend.  He tied up with few ESM Associations and 11 Bihar extended their total support to this programme to help out veterans. He requested presence of President, TSEWA and one more office bearer to grace the meeting.

Decision of Core Committee. The Core Committee approved the attendance of President, TSEWA and Vice President TSEWA & President of Eastern Zone (Cmde Sudheer Parakala) to proceed to Kolkata.

(d)   Donation by an Organisation in USA. The President informed that Col S Agarwal, a Bengal Sapper spoke to him on phone and informed that his organisation based in USA will hold a fund raising meeting to help out veterans from USA and also from India. The feasibility of receiving some funds in US dollars needs to be explored.

Decision of Core Committee. Since any foreign donation can only be received if the organisation in India is registered with Min of Fin to receive such foreign donations, it would be better if the money can be remitted to TSEWA in the form of Indian currency.

There being no further points, the meeting was closed at 11.00 am. The next meeting will be held on Wednesday, 26 Feb 2020.

On conclusion of the Core Committee meeting, all moved to 16 Bajrang Nagar Colony, Bolarum, Secunderbad to attend the 13^th day function of (late) Gp Capt CRR Sastry to pay our homage to the great soul who rendered selfless service to TSEWA from 07 May 2015 to 01 Feb 2020.

Brig CS Vidyasagar (Retd)
President, TSEWA