Defence personnel opting for premature retirement cannot be denied benefits of OROP: AFT
The Armed Forces Tribunal has ruled that defence personnel who have sought voluntary premature retirement cannot be denied benefits under the Defence Ministry’s ‘One Rank, One Pension’ (OROP) scheme.
A soldier who was enrolled in the Army in October 1995 was thereafter discharged from service in November 2014 at his own request, after rendering over 19 years and one month’s service.
However, as a consequence of having sought premature retirement, he was denied the grant of the OROP benefits by the authorities, which cited a new policy on the subject issued by the government in 2015.
The Tribunal’s Bench comprising Justice Anu Malhotra and administrative member Rasika Chaube observed that pensioners form a common category and personnel who opted for premature retirement and qualify for grant of pension are also included in this general category.
The pension regulations and rules applicable to premature retired personnel who qualify for pension are similar to that of a regular pensioner retiring on superannuation or on conclusion of his terms of appointment.
The Bench said that by applying the provisions of a policy prospectively would mean the right created for premature retired pensioners to receive pension at par with a regular pensioner being taken away.
Apart from creating a differentiation in a homogeneous class, taking away of this vested right available to a premature retired personnel violates mandate of the law laid down by the Supreme Court in various cases and makes the action of the authorities unsustainable in law, the Bench remarked.
Once it is found that every person in the Army, the Navy and the Air Force who seeks premature retirement forms a homogenous category in the matter of granting benefit of OROP, for such personnel no policy can be formulated, which creates differentiation in this homogeneous class based on the date and time of their seeking premature retirement, the Bench observed.
The Bench observed that the policy in question in fact divides premature retired personnel into three categories—pre-July 2014 personnel, those personnel who took premature retirement between July 2014 and November 2015 and those who took premature retirement after November 2015.
Merely based on the dates as indicated hereinabove, differentiating in the same category of premature retired personnel without any just cause or reason and without establishing any nexus as to for what purpose it had been done, amounts to violating the rights available under Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution as well as hit by the principles of law laid down by the Supreme Court in the matter of fixing the cut-off date and creating differentiation in a homogeneous class, the Bench observed.
Chandigarh