Opinion

All You Need To Know About the new One Rank, One Pension (OROP) in 2022

All You Need To Know About One Rank, One Pension (OROP)

As a result of Wednesday’s ruling, the Supreme Court endorsed the central government’s decision to introduce One Rank, One Pension (OROP) for defence forces and said that there is no constitutional problem with the way it has been implemented.

An eight-judge bench presided by Justice D Y Chandrachud that considered the “principles governing pensions and cutoff dates” ruling said that there “is no legal mandate mandating pensioners holding the same rank be given the same amount of pension” and the various benefits that may apply to certain personnel, which have an impact on the pension payable, must not be equalized with those applicable to all personnel.
Considering the “principles” as defined by the 7 November 2015 communication to the three service chiefs, the three-judge bench, also including Justice Surya Kant and Vikram Nath, held: “We find no constitutional defect in the OROP principle as described in that same communication.”.

As a result of the letter dated November 7, 2015, the petitioners argued that in the course of implementation, the OROP principle was replaced by the principle of ‘one rank multiple pensions’ for employees with the same length of service. The argument was made that the initial definition of the OROP was altered and instead of an automatic revision of pension rates, under which future increases in pension rates would be automatically passed along to past pensioners, the pension rates would now be adjusted at periodic intervals. In the eyes of these individuals, the deviation from automatic revision is arbitrary, unconstitutional, and in violation of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.

This argument was rejected by the court, which stated that “OROP definitions are not arbitrary”. In its ruling, the court noted that the OROP definition is uniformly applicable to all pensioners, regardless of their retirement dates.

Current status of one rank one pension clause - iPleaders

The cut-off date is used only to determine the salary base to calculate retirement benefits, according to the judgement. According to the government, while those who retired after 2014 have their pensions calculated based on the last salary drawn, those who retired before 2013 have their pensions calculated based on the average salary drawn in 2013.


According to the Supreme Court, the Union government had made a policy decision to increase the base salary for pension calculation purposes “since uniformly applying the last drawn salary to calculate pensions would place prior retirees at a disadvantage”.

There was no doubt that the Union government had a range of policy choices, including taking the minimum, maximum, mean or average; however, it “decided to adopt the average.”. “Those drawing below the average level were brought up to the average while those drawing above the average were protected,” the ruling said, adding “such a decision lies within the ambit of policy choices”.

Court noted that the 2015 communication states that “the pension would be re-fixed every five years in the future” and that such a process has not been completed after 5 years. The court theorized that perhaps the case is pending because it has not been carried out yet”.

Accordingly, the court directed that a re-fixation exercise be conducted on July 1, 2019, upon the expiry of five years, and that all pension arrears payable to eligible pensioners of the armed forces shall be computed and received within three months.

In an opinion issued on Wednesday, the Supreme Court maintained the Centre’s policy of “One Rank One Pension” for defence forces, saying it did not violate the constitution.

A Bench led by Justices DY Chandrachud said, “The Central government has taken a policy decision. Such a decision comes under the sphere of policy-making powers of the government. We cannot find any constitutional infirmity in the OROP principle and the notification of November 7, 2015.”

IESM and the Centre had appeared before the Bench on February 23 to hear the petition. The Bench had reserved its verdict on the question on February 23 and said there was very limited scope of judicial review of policy decisions taken by the executive.

Having done so, the directions directed that the OROP re-fixation exercise would take place from July 1, 2019, and all arrears would be paid to the beneficiaries within three months.

One

As a consequence of the above, a refixation exercise about the military pension due to army personnel should be undertaken by the government for five years as per the OROP policy as of November 7, 2015. A refixation exercise will begin on July 1, 2019, and arrears for Army personnel will be paid within three months, the statement stated.

In a statement, the Bench, which included Justice Surya Kant, said that it was not a legal requirement that pensioners of the same rank should receive the same amount of pension.

Despite what the top court said, it is ruling in the DS Nakara case cannot be interpreted as mandating OROP.

In its arguments, the Centre asserted that both “same rank” and “same length of service” were necessary to obtain OROP benefits.

The Bench had posed several probing questions to the Centre regarding OROP policy and the Modified Assured Career Progression (MACP) scheme and sought clarification on how they were being implemented.

It is a problem that you have hyperbolized in your description of the OROP policy, painting a much rosier picture than that which is provided to the pensioners,” said the Bench.

An affidavit filed in the top court supported the Ministry of Defence’s claim that the Petitioner’s contentions on OROP went against one of the core values of the OROP – that is, both same rank and the same length of service.

In its submission to the top court, the Centre stated that “the comparison sought by the petitioners is between apples and oranges and between comparative and non-comparative, and therefore should be dismissed”.

Pension
“It is impossible to compromise this pair ( “same rank” and “same length of service” ). It is impossible to take merely the same rank and ignore the length of service; similarly, it cannot be taken only the length of service. As a point of emphasis, it is important to note that the word “same” appears twice, as opposed to “same rank” and “same length of service”.


No stretch of the imagination could allow this to be interpreted as the same rank, the same length of service, or the same length of service on different ranks,” it explained.

edited and proofread by nikita sharma

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