State Bank of India released arrears worth Rs 1,465 crore to 7.75
lakh defence pensioners under One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme
Top public sector lender State Bank of India today released arrears
worth Rs 1,465 crore to 7.75 lakh defence pensioners under One Rank One
Pension (OROP) scheme, as per the government rules.
The government had in November last year formally notified the OROP
scheme for the more than 24 lakh defence ex-servicemen and 6 lakh war
widows in the country.
“As per government guidelines, first instalment (1/4th of the total
arrear amount up to February, 2016) to service pensioners and full
amount of arrears to ‘family pensioners’ and ‘gallantry award’
pensioners will be paid on 14th March, 2016,” SBI Chairman Arundhati
Bhattacharya said in a statement.
“All pensioners will get revised basic (pension) from March, 2016 onwards,” she said.
The bank has the largest share of defence pensioners and serves about
50 per cent of total defence pensioners across the country, he said.
“The first tranche of arrear payment by SBI will be around Rs 1,465 crore,” Bhattacharya said.
SBI noted that while the bank has taken utmost care in the
computation and release of arrears to maximum number of eligible defence
pensioners, there could be cases where it has not been able to release
OROP arrears due to information gaps in the data available with the
bank.
“All such persons may approach their pension-disbursing branch and
provide the missing information for an early release of the arrears,” it
added.
SBI has introduced facilities in all branches and Centralised Pension
Processing Centres (CPPCs) to provide arrear details to the pensioners.
Despite a demand by protesting ex-servicemen to implement OROP with
effect from April 1, 2014, the government has said that arrears would be
paid with effect from July 1, 2014, and has pegged the arrears till
December, 2015 at Rs 10,900 crore.
As per government directions, payment of arrears would be made by the
pension-disbursing authorities in 4 installments, except for family
pensioners and pensioners in receipt of gallantry awards, who will be
paid arrears in one installment.
The OROP scheme is expected to cost the government Rs 7,500 crore per year.
PTI
