Rahul Gandhi questions MoD officials on OROP, budget allocation for defence

A day after an heated argument between Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Chairman of Parliamentary Panel on Defence, Jual Oram, the former sought clarifications from the government representatives on the review of One Rank One Pension (OROP), that is pending since June 2020.

The pension allocation for defence personnel has been reduced in the budget that was announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently. The Congress leader in the Parliamentary Standing Committee meeting on Friday questioned the top officials of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) as to "why the budget allocation has been reduced?" PTI reported. 

The Congress leader was pursuing a similar query that was raised by Congress in the parliament during a debate on the new budget. While a review of OROP by the ruling government is still pending, Sitharaman had clarified to both the Houses in parliament that as the OROP arrears had been paid already, the current alloaction of budget for defence has been reduced.

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Answering to the queries raised by Gandhi, the MoD officials reportedly said that an internal panel will look into the matter. Gandhi then sought a deadline expecting a report, to which the defence officials said that since there are excess funds from the current financial year, the defence budget for the FY 2021-22 has been reduced. However, it is unlcear whether MoD officials confirmed on a deadline to submit the report.

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Meanwhile, a committee was formed by the Union Defence Ministry last year to work on the revisions (grants) in the OROP. However, no revisions have been implemented yet, and the demand for grants by defence personnel awaits a nod from the MoD. 

While it was implemented in 2015 by the NDA government, celebrating the anniversary of OROP implementation, the Defence Ministry had last year disbursed Rs 10,795.4 crore as arrears into the accounts of 20,60,220 defence pensioners. However, the queries raised by Gandhi are set to be reviewed by an internal panel of the ministry. 

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