Modi govt announces OROP, fails to win over protesting veterans

Watch video –  Explained: One Rank One Pension

Pensions will be revised every five years, and premature retirees will be excluded from the scheme, Parrikar said. Both these conditions were rejected by the protesting veterans. “Despite the huge fiscal burden, given its commitment to the welfare of ex-Servicemen, the government has taken a decision to implement the OROP… It has been decided that the gap between the rate of pension of current pensioners and past pensioners will be bridged every 5 years… Personnel who voluntarily retire will not be covered under the OROP scheme,” Parrikar said.

Read: Veterans reject key OROP provisions

The government will pay arrears to 28 lakh beneficiaries in four half-yearly instalments. The six lakh widows of ex-servicemen will be paid in the first instalment. The OROP scheme will cost the exchequer between Rs 8,000 crore and Rs 10,000 crore per year, and much more in subsequent years.

A one-member judicial committee would be constituted to give the government a report in six months, the minister said. But the veterans demanded that the review panel have five members, including three of their representatives. “In February 2014, the then [UPA] government stated that OROP would be implemented in 2014-15, but did not specify what OROP would be, how it would be implemented, or how much it would cost,” Parrikar said.

Read: Veterans whose premature retirement valid, legal will get OROP benefits: Rathore

Earlier, the UPA minister of state for defence had told Parliament in 2009 that there were administrative, technical and financial difficulties in implementing OROP, Parrikar said. Stressing that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had fulfilled his commitment and approved OROP, Parrikar accused the previous government of not carrying out a thorough analysis while allotting Rs 500 crore for the scheme.

Read: Govt’s OROP package a ‘betrayal’ to ex-servicemen: Congress

“It is noteworthy that the Koshiyari Committee had accepted the estimate of Rs 235 crore as additional financial burden to implement OROP,” he said, while appealing to the ex-servicemen to call off their agitation. But the veterans said the government’s version of OROP violates the basic definition of the scheme. Group Captain V K Gandhi, general secretary of the Indian Ex-Servicemen’s Movement (IESM) said, “This is not OROP, but One Rank, Five Pensions… Also, the exclusion of premature retirees is not acceptable.”

Read: Decision on OROP ‘historic’, Cong played a joke: Amit Shah

IESM chairman Maj Gen (retd) Satbir Singh, said, “Six of the seven demands have not been met… We had met the defence minister in the morning and told him that if you have to order a committee, it has to be a five-member committee with three of our representatives and not just one member who does not understand any of our issues.”

Col Anil Kaul, spokesperson of the United Front of Ex-Servicemen, had told The Indian Express earlier that the veterans were willing to accept revisions every two years, but not five. Col Rohit Chaudhary of IESM said the veterans had not called off their protest fast, and now planned to organise a mega rally on September 12. “We will call off the fast unto death only if the premature release veterans who constitute 46 per cent of retirees are included in OROP. But the relay hunger strike and protest at Jantar Mantar will continue,” he said.

Read: ‘OROP fail’, tweets Omar Abdullah

Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who has been mediating between the two parties, said, “I believe the insistence on five years by the government has primarily to do with the need to understand how the pensions costs will move post OROP. One year normalisation is what is implied in the purist definition of OROP, but to do so was neither practical or feasible. It is financially prudent to observe pension costs movements for a few years before a commitment to normalise more frequently is implemented.”