Context: Recently, the Supreme Court upheld the central government’s decision on One Rank, One Pension (OROP) for defence forces and said that it does not find any constitutional infirmity in the manner in which it is being implemented.
About One rank, one pension (OROP)
- OROP means that military personnel retiring at the same rank, with the same years of service, must get an equal pension.
- It was recommended by Rajya Sabha Committee on Petitions (Koshyari Committee) in 2011.
- In 2014, the government announced it had accepted OROP in principle, and that it would be implemented prospectively.
- In 2015, government introduced a revised definition of OROP, where the revision between the past and current rates was to take place at periodic intervals.
Demand for OROP
To remove the discrepancy of varying pension:
- Soldiers who retired recently receive more pension than those who did earlier.
To ensure systemic distribution of pension funds.
- The benefits of the successive pay commissions were not passed to servicemen who had retired earlier.
Reasons for different pension system:
- Pensions of ‘other ranks’ differ from that of ‘officers’ due to early retirement.
- Military officers are categorised into: Officers and other ranks
- Other Ranks, which are soldiers, retire at age 35.
Reasons for early retirement: country needs young military.
- They thus miss out on the benefits from subsequent pay commissions.
- The age when officers in the military retire depends upon their ranks.
- The lower the rank, the earlier they retire.
Challenges to OROP
- Financially unsustainable: Because soldiers retire early and remain eligible for pension for much longer period, it impacts capital expenditure of defence ministry.
- The Defence Ministry’s pension-to-budget ratio is the highest among all ministries, and pensions are more than one-fifth of the total defence budget.
Principle of automatic revision is not being followed.
- Automatic revision provides that any future raising of pension rates to be passed on to past pensioners.
- The petitioners contend that periodic revision is arbitrary and unconstitutional under Articles 14 and 21.