OROP: Supreme Court grants Centre time till March 15 to pay arrears
The Supreme Court on Monday gave the Centre time till March 15 to comply with its judgment last year, upholding One Rank-One Pension (OROP) scheme for the Armed Forces after the government informed that it has already tabulated the pension for 25 lakh ex-service personnel. A Bench led by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud adjourned the hearing even as Attorney General R. Venkaramani appeared for the Centre while senior advocate Huzefa Ahmedi and advocate Balaji Srinivasan represented the petitioner, Indian Ex-Servicemen Movement. The Court had found no constitutional infirmity in the OROP principle as defined in the government’s communication of November 7, 2015. The OROP scheme stipulated that benefits would be effective for pensioners from the cut-off date of July 1, 2014. Pensions of past pensioners would be re-fixed on the basis of pensions of retirees in the calendar year 2013. The scheme had finally mandated the re-fixation of pension every five years. The judgment dealt with the petition complaining that pensioners of the same rank, who were, according to them, a “homogenous class”, were arbitrarily …