Notice From Judicial Committee On OROP

The DESW web-site carries a notice from the Judicial Committee appointed for examining representations on implementation of OROP.

More on this later:

The notification states at para 2, "Taking into account, the various representations that were received in response to the public notice, Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare, Ministry of Defence referred the following questions to the Commission, through their letter dated 20th July, 2016".

The questions listed at para 2 (i) to (iv) of the notification appear to be only those that have been referred to the One Man Committee by DESW.

This raises some very important issues for serious consideration by all stake holders as follows :
  • When the Government invited representations from affected stake-holders, on anomalies in OROP implementation, vide a notification in April 2016, was it not understood that the representations would be considered by the Judicial Committee and not filtered out by the same department and organizational structure that had probably caused the anomalies in the first place?
  • When a representation is submitted to a Government department, is it not expected that some sort of public record would be maintained in respect of the representation and its disposal status intimated to the individual or association making the representation?
  • Since a Judicial Committee has been appointed, should it not see it fit to obtain access to all representations received and do some screening within its own resources and apply its own judgement on the representations instead of accepting the view of the department responsible for creating the anomalies as to what is an anomaly and what is not?
  • Why can't all anomalies submitted in response to the notification be placed online for access by all stake-holders? Would that not ensure transparency?
  • It is probably a very good thing that the Committee has now decided to meet veterans at various places across the country. But before undertaking the "contact campaign"  what is wrong with a little methodical processing of all representations laboriously compiled and submitted by stake-holders over the months? Do we assume most of those have been given the short shrift by the collating agency and have ended up in some closed folder, or worse, a government issue waste paper basket? The short-list of anomalies in the notification does cause some unease on that account.

Let us not forget, there are some serious unanswered questions and lack of clarity about the manner in which the OROP tables have been compiled. It is now quite important for those affected to seriously revisit issues stressed on in the past.

A copy of the current notification as downloaded from the DESW web-site: