Parrikar asks officials to minimise court cases
New Delhi, Dec 25 (IANS) Defence ministry officials have been asked to evolve a policy to reduce court cases and address public grievances in a time-bound manner, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said Thursday.
He also said the "One Rank One Pension" norm for armed forces personnel will soon be implemented.
In a message on Good Governance Day, he said: "Minimisation of litigation is a priority and I have instructed the concerned officers to evolve a policy for reducing court cases in service matters, including pensions as well as in issues of cantonments pertaining to land management and civilian interface."
"The public grievances are being forwarded to the concerned officers using online methods. In this context, I have directed all concerned to accord utmost importance to time-bound disposal of public grievances in the ministry as also regular monitoring of the pendency of public grievances by senior officers."
On "One Rank One Pension", he said: "The defence ministry is committed to early implementation of 'One Rank One Pension' for the armed forces and measures are being taken for the same."
"One Rank, One Pension" means soldiers of the same rank and the same length of service get the same pension, irrespective of their retirement date.
Besides, Parrikar said his ministry has adopted several good governance initiatives like promoting e-governance, e-procurement, biometric attendance, digitisation of records, online disposal of public grievances and use of online monitoring of the status of court, tribunal and NHRC cases.
"An Intra-MoD Portal has been developed for supporting these applications in the ministry," said Parrikar.
A significant progress has also been made in digitisation of defence land records. A History division of the ministry has also digitised war records.
"Several other digitised records like recruitment rules, civil lists etc are likely to be placed on our website very soon," he said.