A senior Army officer has served a legal notice to the Union government protesting against the alleged withdrawal of free ration to Army officers in peace areas and sought restoration of the benefit within 60 days.
Col Mukul Dev, Deputy Judge Advocate General, HQ 12 Corps, wrote to the Government of India through Defence secretary Sanjay Mitra seeking immediate withdrawal of the order.
"The government is instead offering Rs 96.03 per day as ration money in lieu, which is highly inadequate," his lawyer Col Rajiv Manglik (retd) told PTI today over the phone.
"Can the sum offered be enough to provide calorific value required a day?" Manglik asked.
In the notice, Col Dev said "I was commissioned in the Indian Army on August 20, 1988 based upon an advertisement ... for Combined Defence Services Examination.
"Beside other terms and conditions of the service spelt out in the said notification, provision for free rations too was clearly given," Dev, who is at present posted at Jodhpur in Rajasthan, said.
"There is no mention of cash in lieu of the free rations in the said notification. It was only after weighing all the conditions of service as laid out in the said notification that I had applied for getting commissioned in the Army," he said in the notice.
"It has now been intimated that with effect from today i.E July one, 2017, no free ration shall be provided to the officers in the Indian Armed Forces while they are serving in peace area and they shall be provided with a paltry sum of Rs 96.03 as ration money instead," the notice said.
The letter said the decision was violative of his service conditions upon which he was employed and commissioned and which he claimed was done without obtaining any written consent from him.
"It may kindly be noted that such notification for provision of free rations to the officers of Indian Armed Forces is still in force even today for the officers who are due for commissioning in near future or who are aspiring to join the Indian Armed Forces," it said.
Col Dev served the legal notice seeking immediate withdrawal of such orders of "non-provisioning of free rations to me while serving in peace areas, without obtaining my consent for the same since the same is illegal and violative of the basic terms and conditions of my service."
He claimed that these cannot be altered without obtaining his "express and written consent."
"In case of non-reversal of such orders within a period of 60 days from the issue of this legal notice, I shall be constrained to approach the Court of Law as also to raise the matter in any other appropriate judicial forum," Dev wrote in the notice.
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