Whether or not the IESM litigation on OROP is to be considered a closed chapter would be for the petitioners to decide. The specific challenge to the policy dimensions on OROP, as laid down in the Government of India letter dated Nov 2015. could certainly be construed as done and dusted after the very clear rulings on it as contained in judgment of the Hon’ble Supreme Court.
From what was known to ESM not directly involved with the IESM petition, it never appeared that the arguments had focused so much on how much the implementation vide Govt letter dated Feb 2016 actually conformed to provisions of the letter dated Nov 2015, the stress having been on targeting the latter. There is still no comprehensive record available whether specific anomalies created by the letter dated Feb 2016 were included in arguments except for the much discussed issues of “One Rank Many Pensions”, “Automatic vs periodic review”, “date/year of implementation” or “max or avg of min and max”.
My own past perceptions of the way OROP campaign had unfolded over the years as well as the issues that had needed to be addressed had been blogged on. During the closing days of the petition and after the recent judgment, I’ve gone over some of the past posts and found them still relevant:
- There’s a need to rise above OROP as a slogan. If there is an issue of disparity and unfairness around the pensionary awards of ESM and attention needs to be focused on those, then a slogan or a mission chant does become a productive and unifying rallying point. However there is a constant need to be aware the wording or, in this case, letters of the slogan do not limit the wider scope of the objective of ensuring justice for ESM. A past blog post had touched on this aspect ➡️ Beyond The OROP "Slogan"
- There is a requirement to examine the logic of quantifying the service of older ESM on the basis of rational and constant measures and to accept that “Rank”, even in combination with QS, is not a logical sole parameter for establishing pension parity. In that respect the sentence in the judgment to the effect that “those having the same rank are not part of a homogeneous group” takes on another profound dimension in other contexts as well. These issues have been mentioned repeatedly in the past on this blog. This post provides a reasonable summary of the concept ➡️ The Hazards Of Ignoring The Non-One-ness Of "One" in OROP
- There is a need to examine all issues relating to ESM pensions in totality, not just from the OROP point of view. These could include anomalies of previous pay commissions, AVS Committee, and those caused by 7CPC. NFU is still outside purview of any discussions on pensions other than separately, in a hypothetical sense. ➡️ LOOKING BACK AT 6 CPC PENSIONS THROUGH THE OROP AND 7 CPC PRISM
- From the time of release of OROP tables in 2016, there has been a need to critically examine how the actual implementation complied with the Government's own definition of letter dated Nov 2015. That is an exercise that can still be performed and not necessarily through litigation. My own views of 2016 may not appear as unfounded as they might have done at that time ➡️ First Impressions Of The OROP Tables
- Retrospective implementation of awards such as MACP needs to be considered by way of policy decisions brought about through consultations between IESM bodies, services HQs and MOD. If need be, obtaining some kind of binding legislative approval could be included in the overall approach. The first requirement in such reasoning is to arrive at a consensus on the need for equity in respect of current pensions of veterans who had retired in the past.
- There is a need for clarity and agreement on the concept of “equal remuneration for equal work” and, equally importantly, the basis of defining “equal work”. Let us never forget that a pension received in the present is a deferred wage and it should be the same for the same amount of service rendered, whether now or in the past.
- Policies in this regard need to be amended through the consultative approach I have suggested. Thus “Equal Pension For Equal Service/Work” could have been the title of the approach but OROP can now be reformatted to include that wider approach instead of there being a move to change the title. 7 CPC even cited the principle of “Inter Temporal Equity” in respect of pensions. Though mechanics of implementing 7CPC fall well short of the cited principle, there is room for rationalisation and OROP could evolve into something approaching “ITE”.
- Future-proofing of pension-parities is most desirable to prevent needless generation of grievances and resulting recrimination. The 7 CPC Matrix is actually a perfect concept for bringing about the previously mentioned “Inter Temporal Equity” in regard to pensions provided placement of older ESM in “levels” as well as at “Increment Stages” of the matrix conforms to the rational definition of “equal work”. The matrix not only needs to follow some form of “notional progression”, it also needs to define progression brought about by MACP or, possibly, NFU. The past post is just an example. Progression on these lines, as suggested in the past, needs to be defined for all levels related to ESM ➡️ Some Notions Of Progression
