New Delhi, March 16 | The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that the One Rank-One Pension (OROP) scheme is a policy decision and the court did not find any constitutional flaw in the principle defined by the communication issued by the government on November 7, 2015.
A bench headed by Justice DY Chandrachud said: “We do not find any constitutional flaw in the OROP principle as defined by the communication dated 7 November 2015.”
The bench, also comprising Justices Surya Kant and Vikram Nath, observed, “Since the definition of OROP is not arbitrary, it is not necessary for us to exercise the determination whether the financial implications of the scheme are negligible or very large”.
Justice Chandrachud, who wrote the judgment for the bench, observed that the element of policy cannot be challenged on the presumption that there is an inflexible notion of OROP in the original understanding. “OROP itself is a matter of policy and it was open to the policy makers to lay down the terms of implementation. The policy is certainly subject to judicial review on constitutional parameters, which is a separate issue”, Justice Chandrachud said.
The bench said that the definition of OROP is equally applicable to all pensioners, irrespective of the date of retirement. It said that since the same application as last drawn pay for the purpose of calculation of pension would cause loss to the pre-retireds, the Central Government has taken a policy decision to increase the base pay for calculation of pension.
The bench observed that all pensioners holding the same rank does not form a homogeneous class for all purposes and the benefit of a new element in the pension scheme could potentially be implemented. However, the scheme cannot divide a homogeneous group on the basis of cut-off date.
“The central government decided to adopt an average. Those below average were brought up to the average score while those with above average were protected. Such a decision falls within the ambit of policy options”, the bench said.
The bench observed that with reference to the communication dated 7 November 2015, the benefit of OROP was to be effective from 1 July 2014, and para 3(v) of it states that “in future, the pension shall be re-fixed every five years.” Year”. Concluding the judgment, the bench said: “We accordingly order and direct that with reference to the communication dated 7 November 2015, the rescheduling exercise shall be conducted with effect from 1st July, 2019 at the end of five years. The arrears payable to all eligible pensioners will be calculated and paid accordingly within a period of three months.
The apex court’s decision came on a petition filed by the Ex-Servicemen Association seeking implementation of OROP, as recommended by the Bhagat Singh Koshyari committee, with automatic annual revision. The petition challenged the existing policy of periodic review once in five years.
The petitioners argue that during the course of implementation, the principle of OROP has been replaced with ‘One Rank Multiple Pension’ for persons with equal length of service. They argued that the initial definition of OROP was changed by the central government and instead of automatic revision of rates of pension, the revision would now happen at periodic intervals.
The central part of presenting the petitioners is that the revision of OROP should be automatic. The Central Government submitted that in the context of the practice governing the pay scales, pensions and other financial emoluments of government employees, apart from the lack of any precedent, it would be impossible to introduce automatic revision.
Source: IANS