Nepal UK
After decades of campaigning for pension parity with their British Army counterparts, former Gurkha soldiers have shifted tactics — from an all-or-nothing equal-pension demand to a detailed "affordable solution" package. A newly formed coalition of Gurkha veteran organisations, coordinated under Nepal's Acting Ambassador to the UK, Bipin Duwadi, and known as the G-Ten group, has submitted an 11-point demand to the UK Ministry of Defence and begun preliminary talks, according to reporting from OnlineKhabar English News and The Kathmandu Post.
The core of the G-Ten proposal reframes the long-running dispute: rather than seeking full parity for all veterans regardless of service length, it asks that Gurkhas who served 15 years receive a pension proportional to the 22-year full-pension benchmark used for British soldiers, with full equality for those who served 22 years or more, and proportional recognition for the 15-to-21-year band in between. The package also seeks war-widow and injury benefits comparable to those India already provides to its Gurkha veterans, and access to a provident fund for eligible former soldiers — benefits currently unavailable to British Gurkha pensioners under the scheme that has governed their service since recruitment terms were last overhauled. Nepal's Foreign Affairs Minister has separately urged the UK to address what he called Gurkha veterans' "longstanding grievances," while London talks earlier this year specifically addressed veterans' demands, and British officials have urged veterans to hold off on further hunger strikes while pension talks continue.
The Ministry of Defence's public position, however, remains that Gurkha pension arrangements are already broadly aligned with those of British troops — a claim campaigners dispute — and MoD officials have said the proposals cut across multiple government departments and involve legal complexities that require the issue to be considered "carefully and responsibly," language veterans' advocates read as a sign of a slow, non-committal process. This is the crux of the controversy for the UK Gurkha and Nepalese veteran community: after a March 2026 Nepalese Supreme Court judgment found the existing UK-Nepal-India tripartite recruitment agreement (dating to 1947) outdated on pension protections, campaigners now face the same choice they have faced for two decades — accept an incremental compromise now, or continue a fight that veterans in their 70s and 80s may not live to see resolved. For Gurkha families settled around Aldershot, Folkestone and other garrison towns, the outcome will directly determine household incomes for elderly veterans and their widows.
