The Supreme Court granted the Centre till March 15 to pay the One Rank-One Pension (OROP) arrears to all qualified retired members of the armed forces.
The Center was urged to make sure that all arrears are promptly paid to the military pensioners and that there are no further delays by a bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice PS Narasimha.
The highest court gave ex-servicemen associations permission to initiate an application if they feel wronged by any Center action on the payment of OROP arrears.
Attorney General R. Venkataramani, speaking on behalf of the Center, stated that the CGDA has finished tabulating the results and has delivered the tables to the Ministry of Defense for final approval.
“By March 15, the money will start flowing into the accounts of 25 lakh pensioners of armed forces”, Venkataramani said.ind
The government filed a request with the highest court last month asking for an extension of time until March 15, 2023, in order to pay OROP plan arrears to all eligible retired members of the armed forces.
The Union government had first filed a petition the top court in June of last year, asking for three months to compute and make payments in accordance with the top court’s ruling from March 16, 2022. This is the second extension the top court has granted the Union government to pay the arrears.
The Indian Ex-Servicemen Movement (IESM) petitioned the supreme court in 2022 to overturn the Centre’s formula, and Balaji Srinivasan, the IESM’s attorney, submitted the petition.
It had said in terms of the communication dated November 7, 2015, the benefit of OROP was to be effected from July 1, 2014 and the communication states that “in future, the pension would be re-fixed every five years”.
“Such an exercise has remained to be carried out after the expiry of five years possibly because of the pendency of the present proceedings,” the bench had said, adding, “We accordingly order and direct that in terms of the communication dated November 7, 2015, a re-fixation exercise shall be carried out from July 1, 2019, upon the expiry of five years.
“Arrears payable to all eligible pensioners of the armed forces shall be computed and paid over accordingly within a period of three months,” it had said.
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