Centre moves SC seeking 3 months more to clear OROP arrears

New Delhi: The Centre has moved the Supreme Court seeking extension of time till March 15, 2023 for payment of arrears of One Rank-One Pension (OROP) scheme to all eligible pensioners of the armed forces.

This is the second extension sought by the Union government to pay the arrears after it had first moved the top court in June and sought three months to compute and make payment.

The top court, which had on March 16 upheld the OROP principle adopted by the Centre saying it does not suffer from any "constitutional infirmity" and is not "arbitrary", had asked the government to pay the arrears within three months.

In its fresh application, the Centre said the Comptroller General of Defence Accounts (CGDA) office was requested by the Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare (DESW) of the Ministry of Defence to prepare the tables for next revision of pension in March 2022 immediately after the judgement of the apex court dated March 16, 2022.

"The CGDA office had raised some issues and sought clarifications from the department. To quickly resolve the issues, the department convened a meeting with concerned stakeholders and necessary clarifications were issued in April, 2022," it said. The Centre said, after incorporating the comments received from both the stakeholder departments, a final cabinet note was prepared.

"After approval of cabinet, various types of pension tables are required to be prepared by CGDA, which itself is a time consuming process and needs further extension of time up to March 15, 2023," it said.

The government said it is seriously processing the matter in order to comply with the judgement and order passed by the court which will take some more time for implementation. It sought further extension of time up to March 15, 2023.

Underlining that the delay is neither deliberate nor intentional, the government said the process of implementing the top court's order is in an "advanced stage" and it shall suffer irreparable loss and injury if the present application is not allowed in the interest of justice.

The top court, which heard the first application for extension of time filed on June 9, had passed an order on September 16 and said, "The time period of three months which was fixed in the judgement dated March 16, is extended by a period of three months from today".

The top court's March 16 verdict came on the plea filed by the Indian Ex-servicemen Movement (IESM) through advocate Balaji Srinivasan against the Centre's formula.

It had said in terms of the communication dated November 7, 2015, the benefit of OROP was to be effected from July 1, 2014 and the communication states that "in future, the pension would be re-fixed every five years".

"Such an exercise has remained to be carried out after the expiry of five years possibly because of the pendency of the present proceedings," the bench had said, adding, "We accordingly order and direct that in terms of the communication dated November 7, 2015, a re-fixation exercise shall be carried out from July 1, 2019, upon the expiry of five years.

"Arrears payable to all eligible pensioners of the armed forces shall be computed and paid over accordingly within a period of three months," it had said.