With recent news trickling in on the
latest Government view-point on OROP and NFFU, a list of probable scenarios can
be drawn up, viz.,
*The proposal for OROP would not be
accepted.
*NFFU would be introduced for serving
Officers.
*Modified Parity would be the basis
of enhancing pensions of past (preVI CPC)
retirees.
*New pay bands would be created rank
wise for fixing pensions.
This leads to the very basic, fundamental and
principle-based consideration that lies at the core of the OROP matter. In
other words, litmus-test questions, based on two primary considerations of
truncated careers and intra-veteran-parity, can be posed for establishing the
validity of such a readjustment of pensions, as follows:
*Would the truncation of careers of
armed forces personnel vis-a-vis those of equivalent civilian employees be
compensated for in terms of pensionary benefits? A very basic, rule of the
thumb yardstick for comparison would be whether the pension of a person in
the armed forces retiring today at age 50 equal, ten years later, the pension of an equivalent
civilian employee, who had joined at the same time as the armed forces retiree, the civilian retiring 10 years later at age 60 years?
*Would the pensionary benefits of a
person retiring in the armed forces today at age 50 years have appropriate
compensation for the shortfall in the pension he’d draw over the next 10 years
as compared to the pay and allowances the equivalent civilian employee would be
drawing over the same period? This compensation would, of course, not be
required if the person from the armed forces was absorbed in a Government
civilian post for the said period.
*Though one rank one pension may not
have been agreed to, for some manner of parity, or modified parity, within the
set of retired personnel of the armed forces, would the re-fixation of the
pension of pre VI CPC retirees take place in:
**Pay-band
of the rank in which the veteran retired?
**Pay-band of the rank the retiree
would have automatically attained under present rules merely on the basis of
the length of his service? Example: A pre VI CPC retiree in rank
of Major (PC) with more than 20 years of service would have been automatically
in the Pay-band of Lt Col now.
**Pay-band of the rank the retiree
would have been placed in based on the length of his service AND after
application of NFFU? Example: A pre VI CPC AND pre AVS-I retiree
in the rank of Lt Col (TS) with 30 years of service would have been in the
pay-band of Col (TS) without NFFU and Brig with NFFU.
Another yardstick for checking the
rational basis of the rejigged pensions would be the enhancement factor for the
pension of an Honorary Officer or, say, a Branch Commissioned Officer of IAF,
who suffer negligible truncation of career, as compared to the enhancement
factor applied to the pension of an Officer with a Permanent Commission who might
have retired at age 52 in the rank of Lt Col or a non-commissioned Officer
retiring at an even younger age. This is not to say a Hony Officer or an IAF BC
Officer should not have an enhancement in pensions, but the factor for
truncation needs to be proportionally higher for those retiring at earlier
ages.
Inputs
for arriving at basic assumptions for the foregoing were provided by the
contents and comments on this ---> valuable blog post
.
