All You Should Know About One Rank One Pension(OROP)

 

Indian Army currently has about 11 lakh serving soldiers and about 25 lakh ex-servicemen who devoted their entire life to serve the nation. Now it is the responsibility of the country to take care of them. For that, a scheme named as One Rank One Pension is being planned to execute to retain equality amongst same rank pensioners regardless of their pension date.

One Rank, One Pension (OROP), or same pension, for same rank and for the same length of service, irrespective of the date of retirement,was the basis for determining the pension and benefits of Indian ARmed Forces till 1973.

In 1973, the Indian National Congress (INC) Govt headed by Indira Gandhi, Prime minister, following the Third Central Pay Commission (3 CPC), in an "ex-arte" decision terminated OROP

The termination of OROP caused disquiet in the Armed Forces and has since become a cause of public protests by Armed Forces

Presently the ratio of pensioners to serving personnel in the military is 1.7 to 1; by comparison the ratio for civil pensioners to civil work force is 0.56 to 1.

What is One Rank One Pension?

OROP is a scheme which is in news since the era of Mrs. Indra Gandhi. Pay commission which sits after every 10 years gives recommendations on how the salary and allowances to be increased in order to cope up with the current inflation rate.
Every soldier whether an officer or a jawan, when retired, gets pension according to the last salary he withdraws from his account.
A soldier who retires before implementation of pay commission gets less pension as compared to the one who got retired from Army just after the implementation of the recommendation of pay commissions.
What all the retired soldiers want is that the salary of every ex-serviceman of the same rank must get the same pension.
 OROP is expected to benefit about 6 lakh widows and families of several brave soldiers who sacrificed their life for the country.

Steps Taken for Implementing OROP

In theory, UPA Government had accepted the scheme many a times but didn’t implement.

In 2011, the Petitions Committee of the Indian Upper House of Parliament, the Rajya Sabha, known as the Koshyari Committee after its Chairman, a veteran member of the BJP, examined the issue of grant of OROP to Armed Forces Personnel and submitted its report on 19 December 2011

The 10- member Koshyari Committee unanimously found that "there is merit in the demand for One Rank One Pension by Armed Forces Personnel". It strongly recommended that, "Government should implement OROP in the defence forces across the board at the earliest and further that for future, the pay, allowances, pension, family pension, etc in respect of the defence personnel should be determined by a separate commission so that their peculiar terms" are properly taken into account

On 27 February 2014, Defence Minister A K Antony announced that UPA will implement OROP by 1 April 2014

NDA government allotted 1000 crore in the 2015 budget which was presented by Arun Jaitley.

Manohar Parrikar, Defence Minister, approves proposal for implementation of OROP, estimated to cost ₹ 8300 crores. The proposal is forwarded by the MOD, to Ministry of Finance on 17 Mar 2015, where it is still lying

Prime Minister Narendra Modi acknowledged in his Independence Day address on Aug 15,2015 that he has yet to reach a resolution on the One Rank One Pension (OROP) demand of ex-servicemen, but promised that his government had "accepted OROP in principle