The union cabinet on Wednesday approved the One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme for close to 16 lakh defence pensioners even as it leaves out those who would take voluntary retirement in future.

In a statement, the union government said that the benefit will be given with effect from July 1, 2014 and pensions will be re-fixed for those who retired before July 1, 2014 in the same rank and with the same length of service.

The benefit, it said will also be extended to family pensioners including war widows and disabled pensioners.

However, as in the past when the government notified OROP last year, it again made it clear through the union cabinet decision that “personnel who opt to get discharged henceforth on their own request will not be entitled to the benefits of OROP” and that “It will be effective prospectively”.

This has invited sharp criticisms from the ex-servicemen fraternity even as Constitution of Judicial a committee headed by former Patna High Court Chief Justice L Narasimha Reddy has been formed to look into any anomalies in implementation of OROP. The committee will give its report in six months. The arrears will be paid in four half-yearly installments. However, all the family pensioners including those in receipt of Special/Liberalized family pension and Gallantry award winners shall be paid arrears in one installment.

While in future, the pension would be re-fixed every five years, the government said that the financial implications on account of grant of OROP including Pre-Matured Retirees (PMR) cases would be to the tune of Rs 10925.11 crore for payment of arrears and annual financial implication would be Rs 7488.7 crore. Till March 31, 2016, 15.91 lakh pensioners have been given the first installment of OROP, according to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), which amounts to Rs. 2,861 crore.

MoD has sad that the information is being gathered for processing on priority basis, the cases of nearly 1.15 lakh pensioners who have not got their installments due to gaps of information such as the length of service being assessed and others.