• India
  • Jan 14
  • Mathew Gregory

Indian Armed Forces celebrate Veterans Day on Jan 14

    • Indian Armed Forces celebrates Veteran’s Day on 14 Jan 2021.

    • The day was chosen as recognition of the services rendered by the first Commander-in-Chief of Indian Armed Forces, Field Marshal KM Cariappa, OBE who retired on this day in 1953.

    • The day is organised to mark our solidarity towards the Next of Kin (NoK) of our brave hearts and towards our veterans as a mark of respect to their selfless duty and sacrifices towards the Nation.

    • The basic objective behind the celebration is to honour and resolve the problems of ex-servicemen, which they face after retirement.

    • Army Day celebrations also take place from January 6 to 15 thus the Veterans Day becomes a part of the celebrations.

    • There are about 2.6 million ex-servicemen, and 60,000 widows, including war widows.

    • Approximately 60,000 armed forces personnel retire or are released from active service every year. Most are in age bracket of 35 to 45 years.

    • In pursuit of Veterans welfare, the Veterans Cell was raised in April, 2013 as a single window for the redressal of veterans’ issues and aspirations at Army HQ level.

    • Its role and charter since then has expanded considerably, to include matters beyond the usual pension and welfare related issues thus, required the scaling up of the Army Veterans Cell into the Directorate of Indian Army Veterans (DIAV) at the AG Branch.

    • DIAV acts as the front face of the organisation towards handling and resolution of issues affecting our veteran’s fraternity and has put tremendous effort to consolidate database of ESM, disable soldiers, gallantry awardees, BC/PC case, Veer Naris etc.

    • To facilitate greater connect and awareness of activities, policies and welfare schemes, a web portal and Android OS based app called Veterans Outreach Application has been launched by DIAV.

    • Indian Army Veterans Portal – www.indianarmyveterans.gov.in has been established by DIAV to reach out to Veterans and hosting of veteran related info. The info on DIAV portal is available to Veterans in 11 languages.

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants. The views expressed here are personal.)

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