” Pension is not a bounty nor a matter of grace depending upon the sweet will of the employer. It is not an ex-gratia payment, but a payment for past services rendered”

This is the famous declaration made by the apex court, the Supreme Court in the historical judgment in the D.S. Nakera case. Even after 32 years of this judgment which is considered as the Magna Carta of the pensioners and the spirit of the contents is yet to be digested by the ruling class and the authorities. And that is why the government is dilly-dallying in implementing the ONE RANK, ONE PENSION.

What does one rank, one pension (OROP) means? It is a very long standing demand of the defense veterans. Retired soldiers of the same rank and equal length of service should get the same amount of pension, regardless of the date of retirement. In other words, equal pension for those who have retired in one particular year, as those who retire later in another year at the same position, and for the same duration of service rendered. Now, there is huge gap between the past pensioners and the present pensioners in the same rank and same length of service. This gap keeps widening with every pay revision based on successive recommendations of the Pay Commissions. It is also a fact that the defense pensioners do not get to serve many years that are required to procure optimum pension amount. So the demand of one rank, one pension is nothing short of parity in pension.

The Ex-Servicemens’ Organisations have conducted several agitations demanding OROP and a they got a favourable judgement of the apex court in this regard. During the UPA government’s regime a Parliamentary Committee appointed to study the issue had given an unanimous recommendation for implementation of one rank, one pension. Still the Man Mohan Singh government tried their level best to deny the benefit to the war veterans. And only after further sustained struggles by the defense veterans, the Congress government at the fag end of their regime allocated a meager Rs.500 crore in the interim budget of 2014-15 to implement the OROP.

It was one of the important promises of the BJP during the 2014 Lok Sabha election that they are committed to implement one rank, one pension if they are elected to power.They are giving assurances after assurances after coming to power on implementation. The Defense Minister, Shri. Manohar Parikkar had stated that his ministry has completed the formalities and OROP will be implemented prospectively fro the financial year 2014-15. But contrary to this, the Finance Minister, Shri. Arun Jaitly allocated a paltry Rs.1000 crore for implementation of the scheme which reflected the negative approach of the BJP government on this vital issue. In the same budget the Finance Minister so generously granted a tax concession of 5.9 lakh crore for the corporates, scrapped the wealth tax and reduced the corporate tax from 30% to 25%.But still not interested to allot an estimated Rs.8000 crore to implement the genuine demand of 3 million defense veterans and 6 lakh war widows.

Now the Prime Minister, Shri. Narendra Modi says the issue is complicated ,vexed and has several definitions. This is a clear indication of dilution of the concept of OROP. He further says that his government will implement it but will not give any time frame. Naturally, the war veterans have become furious against this double standard and rather cheating and has started hunger fast in New Delhi and all other places across the country from June 14, 2015. AIBDPA fully supports the agitation and calls upon all its units to extend solidarity to the agitations of the war veterans.