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One Rank One Pension: Modi sarkar finally walks the talk

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Sandeep Unnithan
Sandeep UnnithanSep 06, 2015 | 00:00

One Rank One Pension: Modi sarkar finally walks the talk

Defence minister Manohar Parrikar ended one of India’s ugliest standoffs in recent years with an announcement that the government was giving One Rank One Pension (OROP) to its retired soldiers. What this means is that all ex-servicemen who have retired before March 31, 2014 will now be paid the same pension irrespective of the year they have retired. To implement OROP, the government will shell out between Rs 8,000 and Rs 10,000 crore in the next few months to equalise the discrepancies among pensioners holding the same rank. It will also pay out nearly Rs 12,000 crore in arrears to over 22 lakh ex-servicemen. Over six lakh widows will get their arrears on priority, in a single installment, other veterans will be paid out in four half-yearly installments.

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The final figure will emerge a few weeks later when the ministry of defence’s executive order will put down, to the last rupee, how much it will pay its pensioners. It is likely to be a substantial figure. As Rajeev Chandrasekhar, member of Parliament says, OROP “is the most significant veterans welfare effort in post-independence India by any government”. The announcement was the result of a long and hard-fought battle by veterans. Chandrasekhar himself has battled for OROP for over nine years, from its early days under the UPA in 2006 when over 10,000 ex-servicemen returned their medals to the president, to mediating between the government and veterans in the bitter protests at Jantar Mantar, which began in July this year.

Today’s decision is historic simply because OROP has been in the pipeline for so long. The Third Pay Commission in 1973 reduced military pensions and brought them on a par with those given to other central government employees. A high-level committee of the government led by then minister of state for defence KP Singh Deo recommended OROP in 1984. Successive governments, including NDA-1, did not implement it. UPA-2 made only a token announcement and set aside a paltry Rs 500 crore.

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Some outstanding issues remain. There is, for instance, the surprising announcement today that OROP will not apply to soldiers who have retired prematurely. (Baffling because the armed forces’ steeply hierarchal pyramid structure actually encourages officers to “move up or move out”.) Also, that the government will not hike pensions every year to equalise them but do it only once in five years. These outstanding issues provide the reason the veterans say they are yet to call off their hunger strike at Jantar Mantar. But to see how far the NDA government has come in acceding to their demands, they only need to remember what the then defence minister Arun Jaitley told them in a meeting in June last year: “Lower your expectations!” The figure offered by the government then was just a few thousand crores. It was just an enhancement in pensions but not the OROP that was promised to them. Cut to January this year, when defence minister Manohar Parrikar not only calculated the Rs 8,293 crore figure the government would need to implement OROP but also speedily sanctioned it. Parrikar has finally walked his talk. For the veterans to now continue the stir, particularly when their main demand for OROP has been met, would be churlish.

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Last updated: September 07, 2015 | 14:49
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