The Ministry of Defence declared on Friday that the Indian government has forked out over Rs 42,700 crore under the One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme to 20.6 lakh retired servicemen. The OROP was implemented by the Central government via an order on November 7, 2015, which entails all the retired servicemen who have retried before 30 June 2014.
A sum of Rs 10,795.4 crore has been shelled out to 20.6 lakh defence forces(family) pensioners as arrears under the OROP scheme. This scheme that was implemented for the welfare of the retired servicemen has cost the exchequer a sum of Rs 7,123 crore for six years since 2014 which cumulates to Rs 42,740.28 crore since the government stated in a statement on Friday.
“The yearly recurring expenditure on account of OROP is about Rs 7,123.38 crores and for about six years starting from 01.07.2014, the total recurring expenditure worked out to approximately Rs. 42,740.28 crore. OROP beneficiaries also got the benefit of fixation of pension under 7th CPC while calculating the pension by a multiplication factor of 2.57,” Ministry of Defence said in a statement.
“Keeping in view the scale and complexity of defence pensions, at-length consultations were held with experts and retired servicemen before issuing the order of implementation of OROP,” it added.
OROP states that uniform pension must be paid to the armed forces personnel retiring in the same rank with the same duration of service regardless of their date of retirement. Hence, OROP aims at closing the gap between the rate of pension of current and past retired servicemen at regular intervals.
Before the OROP scheme was implemented, retired servicemen used to get pensions in accordance with the recommendations of the pay commission for the time they had retired.
