Supreme Court takes serious view of the defence ministry’s delay in resolving pension anomalies of retired officers

Vijay Mohan 

Chandigarh, July 28 

The Supreme Court has taken a serious view of the defence ministry’s delay in resolving pension anomalies of retired officers of the rank of captain in the “One Rank One Pension” (OROP) scheme.

In orders passed this week, the apex court observed that it was inclined to enhance the pension by 20 per cent in addition to imposing exemplary costs if the ministry continues to seek more time from the court and delay implementation.

The case is now scheduled to come up for hearing on July 30.

The genesis of the issue is the OROP introduced in 2015 when the pension of current retirees was fixed as well as that of the past retirees. There being no proper data for the ranks of regular captains and majors since the minimum current rank of retirement on attainment of pensionable service is lieutenant colonel, there were certain anomalies in the pension tables for captains and majors.

Thereafter, a “One Man Judicial Committee” (OMJC) appointed by the defence ministry had recommended the resolution of this anomaly in 2016 but no decision was taken by the ministry on the same. Later, the Kochi and Chandigarh Benches of the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) had directed the ministry to resolve the anomaly based on the OMJC recommendations in a time-bound manner.

However, rather than implementing the judgment, the defence ministry challenged the decision of the AFT in the Supreme Court. Despite multiple opportunities granted by the apex court to take action on resolution of the anomaly, the ministry failed to resolve it, leading to the strong observations by the Supreme Court.

An apex court bench in 2022 had also recorded its displeasure against the defence ministry for filing multiple appeals against disability pension of disabled soldiers in matters that were already settled by the high courts and the apex court.

After a lull of about five years, the ministry again started flooding the high courts and the Supreme Court with thousands of petitions against verdicts rendered by the AFT in favour of disabled soldiers. In 2018 and 2019, high-level committees of the Law and Defence Ministries had directed the MoD to withdraw appeals against disabled soldiers from the Supreme Court.

After withdrawing all appeals from the apex court just before the 2019 election, the MoD again started filing appeals in the same matters in October 2023 much to the discomfort of various veteran organisations who wrote to the defence minister against the move.