This Article is From Oct 07, 2015

War Memorial, Bonus for Railway Employees Get Cabinet Nod

War Memorial, Bonus for Railway Employees Get Cabinet Nod

The war memorial will be built near India Gate, which honours the soldiers who died the First World War.

New Delhi: With an eye on the coming elections in Bihar, the Union cabinet has cleared two pending proposals: a productivity linked bonus for railway employees and a National War Memorial in Delhi in the honour of 22,500 soldiers who died in battle since Independence.

The war memorial will be built near India Gate, which honours the soldiers who died during the First World War. The Rs 500-crore project, which will be completed in five years, has been a long pending demand of the armed forces. The ex-servicemen have been on protest for the implementation of the One Rank One Pension Scheme for months.

The Railway bonus is expected to benefit around 12.58 lakh non-gazetted employees across the country and will cost the exchequer Rs 1030 crore.

While these may not directly affect the voters in Bihar, the proposals are expected to have a footprint in the poll-bound state.

Three of the biggest players in this election - Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan -- have been rail ministers. In fact since 1947, eight leaders from the state have had charge of the railway ministry -- Jagjivan Ram, RS Singh, Lalit Narayan Mishra, Kedar Pandey, George Fernandez, Ramvilas Paswan, Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad were all Bihar strongmen.

Most of these leaders have showered his constituency and the state with recruitment drives, trains and railway projects. There are close to 10 major railway establishments in Bihar.

 
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