A delegation of ex-servicemen met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and requested him to extend the benefit of One Rank One Pension (OROP) to those who have taken premature retirement.
“We gave memorandum with 2-3 issues where we feel notification could have been better if it had covered these issues in OROP,” Lt Col (Retd) Dinesh Nain, who was part of the delegation, said after the meeting with the Finance Minister.
The OROP issues include pre-mature retirement and fixing of the benchmark, he said.
The OROP notification issued on November 7 by the government said that the armed forces personnel who opt to get discharged on their request would henceforth not get OROP benefits. “It will be effective prospectively,” it said.
“Although we will go to judicial commission, it is better that the government resolve it without the need to go to judicial commission,” he said.
The long-pending OROP for ex-servicemen was brought into force on November 7 with government issuing a notification to benefit more than 2.5 million veterans and war widows.
However, the protesting ex-servicemen rejected the notification, saying their main demands have not been accepted and it has become ‘one-rank-five-pension’.
The notification is almost similar to the announcement made by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on 5 September.
