Indira Gandhi would have handled OROP issue far better than Modi
An ugly relay hunger strike by ex-servicemen across the country which has thoroughly embarrassed the government enters its 81st day today even as the government celebrates the 50th anniversary of a war with Pakistan in which many of these veterans fought. The veterans are angry over the delay in the government implementing its promise of "One Rank One Pension" (OROP), or the same pension for the same length of service irrespective of the date of retirement.
"One Rank One Pension" was first defined in the obscure report of the high-level committee on problems of ex-servicemen that has since disappeared into government archives. In March 1984, then prime minister Indira Gandhi constituted India’s first high-level committee on ex-servicemen. She had held the defence minister’s portfolio for two years after her return to power in 1980 and was conscious of the disquiet within the community of ex-servicemen. A stream of complaints poured into her office from military pensioners. These were the soldiers recruited after the massive expansion of the Army following the border war with China in 1962. These soldiers had fought the wars of 1965 and 1971 with Pakistan and were now starting to retire. Every year, nearly 60,000 soldiers were having to contend with problems their fathers and grandfathers never had to face. They had reduced pensions — the government had, in 1973, reduced pensions from 75 per cent of the last pay drawn, to 50 per cent. This was the fallout of a 1973 decision by the Indira Gandhi government to bring all central government employees, including soldiers, under the ambit of the Pay Commission.
Soldiers could serve upto 15 years as opposed to just seven years until the 1960s. But after retirement, they found limited avenues for employment. The conditions of widows of soldiers who had retired before 1964 was dismal. They were not eligible for the family pension of Rs 175 given to them. This unfairly bracketed group of widows survived on monthly doles of Rs 50 from state governments.
Indira Gandhi chose her young minister of state for defence, Kamakhya Prasad Singh Deo, to head the high-level committee on ex-servicemen. It was an appropriate choice. Deo was one of the few members of Parliament to have been deployed in combat while being a parliamentarian. An MP from Dhenkanal in Odisha, he was a second lieutenant in the Territorial Army. He had been deployed with the 144th Air Defence Artillery regiment to guard the Lalru ammunition dump near Chandigarh.
Deo’s 17-member committee also comprised several junior ministers in the Congress government - PA Sangma, MPs like Rajesh Pilot and Jaswant Singh, then Kerala home minister Vayalar Ravi and then Maharashtra home minister Vilasrao Deshmukh.
Defence pensions were not part of the committee’s terms of reference, but it had to be included because it was the top priority of ex-servicemen wherever the committee members went.
In its 166-page report, the committee first mentioned "One Rank One Pension" in sentences which have by now gone on to define this contentious subject:
"Ex-servicemen throughout the country have raised the point very emphatically. They are of the view that a Defence Forces pensioner, irrespective of his date of retirement, should get the same pension as another pensioner who retired later for the same rank and the same length of service. Whenever pensions are revised, the same should be applicable and automatically and with prospective effect to existing pension, widows' pension and so on, whenever revised should again be automatically applicable to older cases. The committee requests the government to consider this matter particularly in the light of the principle which has been established regarding the pensions of judges of the Supreme Court and high courts."
The committee submitted its 166-page report in seven months, on October 27, 1984, five months ahead of its deadline. It was just four days before Indira Gandhi’s assassination. It is not clear if the prime minister actually saw the report and its suggestion of OROP. What we do know is that a majority of its 69 recommendations, like improvement in the efficiency of the Allahabad-based Controller of Defence Accounts (Pensions) and the grant of family pensions to approximately 25,000 "pre-1.1.1964 widows of pensioners", were finally implemented.
Only two recommendations - for an ex-servicemen’s commission to look into the problems of veterans, and OROP — were shelved. They were implemented by the outgoing UPA government in 2014, but without a financial outlay.
OROP now haunts the NDA government because Prime Minister Narendra Modi made it an article of faith for his government. The ex-servicemen protesting at Jantar Mantar are especially bitter because the scheme has not materialised despite multiple assurances by the prime minister.
We can only speculate about what the late prime minister Indira Gandhi would have done about OROP. But one thing is clear. The astute politician that she was, she would never have made a commitment without first studying its financial implications. And once having committed to it, would not have delayed its implementation.