No Legal Mandate That Same Rank Pensioners Must Be Given Same Pension
Case: Indian Ex Servicemen Movement (An All India Federation Of Military Veterans Organisation Represented Vs. Union Of India Department Of Exservicemen Welfare Ministry Of Defence Secretary
Coram: Justices DY Chandrachud, Surya Kant and Vikram Nath
Case No.: Writ Petition (Civil) No. 419 of 2016
Court Observation: “We find no constitutional infirmity in the OROP principle adopted”
“We accordingly direct that a refixation exercise must be conducted by the Govt. for a period of 5 years with regard to pension payable to Army Personnel as stated in the OROP policy in accordance with the November 7, 2015 notification. Refixation exercise to be carried out from July 1, 2019 and arrears to be paid to Army personnel within 3 months”
“We find no constitutional infirmity in the OROP principle as defined by the communication dated 7 November 2015 for the following reasons:
(i) The definition of OROP is uniformly applicable to all the pensioners irrespective of the date of retirement. It is not the case of the petitioners that the pension is reviewed ‘automatically’ to a class of the pensioners and ‘periodically’ to another class of the pensioners;
(ii) The cut-off date is used only for the purpose of determining the base salary for the calculation of pension. While for those who retired after 2014, the last drawn salary is used to calculate pension, for those who retired prior to 2013, the average salary drawn in 2013 is used. Since the uniform application of the last drawn salary for the purpose of calculating pension would put the prior retirees at a disadvantage, the Union Government has taken a policy decision to enhance the base salary for the calculation of pension. Undoubtedly, the Union Government had a range of policy choices including taking the minimum, the maximum or the mean or average. The Union government decided to adopt the average. Persons below the average were brought up to the average mark while those drawing above the average were protected. Such a decision lies within the ambit of policy choices;
(iii)While no legal or constitutional mandate of OROP can be read into the decisions in Nakara (supra) and SPS Vains (supra), varying pension payable to officers of the same rank retiring before and after 1 July 2014 either due to MACP or the different base salary used for the calculation of pension cannot be held arbitrary; and (iv) Since the OROP definition is not arbitrary, it is not necessary for us to undertake the exercise of determining if the financial implications of the scheme is negligible or enormous”.
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Keywords
OROP, Same Rank Pensioners,
