OROP Demanded for all Central Government Pensioners – Stir Continues
“All Central Government pensioners continue to demand an OROP like pension system for them too.”
One Rank One Pension simply means, uniform pension for military personnel retiring in the same rank with the same length of service irrespective of their date of retirement, and any future enhancement in the rates of pension be automatically passed on to past pensioners.
Among the main demands of the ex-servicemen now is that the pension should be revised every year. Only then will there be no difference between the old and new retirees. The Centre has offered to revise the pension once every five years now. The armymen are ready to settle for a revision of once every two years. And they said, instead of equalizing the pensions every year as required as per the approved definition, the Govt has announced equalization after 5 years. This would totally defeat the definition of OROP. Large number of senior defence personnel will start drawing less pension than juniors. This would result in One Rank Five Pensions and not One Rank One Pension.
But, everybody is now fascinated by the concept of automatically rising pension scales. From the very beginning, more than eight lakh personnel of the Central Paramilitary Forces, including the CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP and SSB, have been demanding OROP for them. They have already presented their memorandum to the 7th Pay Commission and the Parliamentary Standing Committee. Unconfirmed reports say that opinion of the Ministry of Home Affairs has been sought in this regard.
A few months ago, in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha, Indrajit Singh of the Ministry of Defence, said that there were no plans to give OROP to paramilitary forces.
Unlike the ex-servicemen of the defence forces, the leader of Ex-Central Paramilitary Forces Personnel Welfare Association is not interested in taking the protests to the streets. He said that he will decide after the government’s notification in this regard.
Employees of the railways too have demanded an OROP scheme for themselves. AIRF and NFIR, two of the largest railway employee federations, are putting pressure on the government and the 7th Pay Commission to extend the scheme to them too.
Following these developments, Shiva Gopal Mishra, Secretary of NC JCM, the largest federation of Central Government employees, has written a letter to the 7th Pay Commission strongly demanding that OROP be given to them too. In the letter, he has stated that the scheme must be effective in removing the differences between the pensions drawn by the past and future retirees.