No point revising One Rank, One Pension scheme, Centre tells Supreme Court: Govt says move will be burden on exchequer

The Government of India on Friday told the Supreme Court that there will be no revisions, as of now, to the One Rank, One Pension (OROP) scheme. Centre said that it has already decided on the formula for OROP and nothing much can be done as it would lead to financial implications. The Supreme Court has given four weeks to the government to submit reply to petitioners’ PIL. [caption id=“attachment_4758801” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The Supreme Court of India. AP[/caption] The government response came in reaction to a petition filed by the an association of ex-servicemen in the Supreme Court. The petitioners have said that the OROP scheme implemented by the government is not exactly according to the recommendations of the Koshiyari Committee. The Narendra Modi government had announced the One Rank One Pension scheme for the ex-servicemen in September 2015. It calls for payment of a uniform pension to the Armed Forces personnel retiring in the same rank with the same length of service, regardless of their date of retirement. The Centre has also rejected the possibility any annual benefit to the ex-armymen stating the doing so would further “burden the exchequer”. The government said that it won’t be reconsidering reducing the time for periodical revisions to the scheme stating that it had already gone out of its way to dole out benefits for the retired officers. Meanwhile, the judiciary said that since OROP is a policy decision, it can’t do much in the case. One of the petitioners, Colonel Kirit Joshipura spoke to CNN-News18 to express his disappointment over the government’s response and said that the government should call the petitioners for talks otherwise they would resort to protests at Jantar Mantar in Delhi. He said that even during the UPA regime, neither Sonia Gandhi nor Rahul Gandhi bothered to listen to their demands. Whereas, Lt Gen Raj Kadyan told CNN News18, that out of the 8,000 cr rupees sanctioned by former defence minister Manohar Parrikar, only about 2,800 cr is left to be allocated and the government should ensure that the amount is sanctioned since the bulk of it has already been disbursed. He also condemned the petitioners’ decision to move to the Supreme Court stating that this will leave the government with no choice but to forcefully abide by the court’s judgement in the case and hence the move was “ill-thought-out”.