One Rank One Pension

One Rank One Pension, or OROP, is the Ministry of Defence scheme under which Defence Forces personnel who retire in the same rank with the same length of service draw the same pension whatever the date of their retirement, sanctioned by Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare letter No. 12(1)/2014/D(Pen/Pol)-Part-II dated 7 November 2015 and effective from 1 July 2014. Pensions are re-fixed every five years against the pension of a recent retiree cohort, which is what keeps the parity alive.

The scheme answers a specific defect. Defence pension was fixed on the pay drawn at retirement, and pay rises with each pay commission, so a Havildar who left in 1985 and a Havildar who left in 2013 with identical service drew very different pensions for the rest of their lives. OROP raises the older pensioner to the level of the newer one at each revision instead of leaving the gap to widen.

Three rounds have been run. The first took effect from 1 July 2014 on the calendar year 2013 base, the second from 1 July 2019 on the 2018 base, and the third from 1 July 2024 on the 2023 base, with the pension tables for the current round issued on 4 September 2024. The Supreme Court examined the design of the scheme in 2022 and held it valid.

It is a pension scheme, and it is distinct from Military Service Pay and the defence pay matrix, which govern the pay of serving personnel.

What the scheme decides

OROP fixes one pension figure for each combination of rank and length of service, and pays that figure to every pensioner in that combination. Paragraph 2 of the letter dated 7 November 2015 states the principle as uniform pension paid to Defence Forces personnel retiring in the same rank with the same length of service, regardless of their date of retirement, which implies bridging the gap between the rates of pension of current and past pensioners at periodic intervals.

Two things follow from that wording. The parity is horizontal, across retirement years within a rank, and not vertical across ranks. And it is delivered at intervals rather than continuously, which is the feature that was later challenged in court.

The order itself explains why defence pensioners were treated separately. A Sepoy in the Army and the equivalent rank in the Navy and Air Force retire after 17 or 19 years of engagement, and officers retire before reaching 60, the normal civil age of superannuation set out in the article on retirement age. A soldier therefore spends far longer drawing a pension than a civil servant does, and a pension frozen at the pay of an early exit year falls behind faster.

The order of 7 November 2015

MoD letter No. 12(1)/2014/D(Pen/Pol)-Part-II dated 7 November 2015 is the founding instrument, signed by K. Damayanthi, Joint Secretary, and issued with the concurrence of the Ministry’s Finance Division under ID No. PC to 10(11)/2012/Fin/Pen of the same date. Paragraph 3 lists five salient features, and each of them still governs.

Paragraph 3(i) re-fixed the pension of past pensioners on the basis of the pension of retirees of calendar year 2013, effective from 1 July 2014. Paragraph 3(ii) set the method as the average of the minimum and maximum pension of personnel retired in 2013 in the same rank and with the same length of service. Paragraph 3(iii) protects a pensioner drawing above that average. Paragraph 3(iv) set arrears in four equal half yearly instalments, with family pensioners and gallantry award winners paid in one. Paragraph 3(v) is the clause the whole scheme turns on: in future, the pension would be re-fixed every five years.

Two more paragraphs matter in practice. Paragraph 4 excludes personnel who opt to be discharged on their own request, and paragraph 5 committed the government to a Judicial Committee on anomalies. The detailed tables promised by paragraph 6 followed under the same file number on 3 February 2016, and a corrigendum to the order was issued on 6 June 2017.

How a pension is fixed under OROP

The rate is an arithmetic average of two figures, not a formula applied to pay. For each rank and each year of qualifying service, the Department takes the lowest and the highest pension actually drawn by personnel of that rank and service who retired in the base year, and sets the OROP rate at the mean of those two.

Paragraph 4.3 of MoD letter No. 1(1)/2019/D(Pen/Pol)/Vol-II dated 20 January 2023 states the method for the second round in those terms: the revised rates are the average of the minimum and maximum rate of pension for a rank and a qualifying service, taken from live data of 2018 retirees. Paragraph 2.2 of the letter dated 10 July 2024 repeats it for the 2023 cohort.

The consequence is that OROP does not compute a pension from a pay level at all. It reads a table. A pensioner needs three particulars to find their figure, namely rank, group in the case of JCOs and Other Ranks, and actual qualifying service, and all three are printed on the Pension Payment Order. Qualifying service is capped at the maximum term of engagement for the rank, so extra service beyond that term does not buy a higher table rate.

Protections written into the tables

Three protections stop the averaging method from cutting anyone’s pension. Paragraph 3(iii) of the 7 November 2015 letter protects a pensioner already drawing above the average, and the protection has been carried into every later round as paragraph 2.3 of the letter dated 10 July 2024.

Paragraph 5 of the letter dated 20 January 2023 goes further, stating that where the revised pension works out lower than the existing pension as on the effective date, the pension shall not be revised to the disadvantage of the pensioner or family pensioner. An OROP revision can therefore only raise a pension or leave it alone.

Paragraph 4.3 of the same letter also smooths the tables internally. Where the rate for a higher qualifying service came out below the rate for a lower qualifying service in the same rank, or where the data for a higher qualifying service was blank, the higher of the two was carried across, which is why adjacent cells in a table often show identical figures. The same protection runs across ranks, so a rate in a higher rank is never left below the rate for a lower rank at the same qualifying service.

Who the scheme covers

OROP reaches the whole of the pensioned strength of the three services and several attached organisations. Paragraph 3 of the letter dated 20 January 2023 applies the revision to pensioners and family pensioners who retired, were discharged or were invalided out from service, or died in service or after retirement, in the rank of Commissioned Officers, Honorary Commissioned Officers, JCOs and Other Ranks, and Non-Combatants (Enrolled), of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Defence Security Corps, Territorial Army and Ex-State Forces.

Family pensioners are inside the scheme, not adjacent to it. Paragraph 2.4 of the letter dated 10 July 2024 extends the benefit to family pensioners including war widows and disabled pensioners, and the tables carry ordinary, special and liberalised family pension rates alongside the retiring, service, special, disability, invalid, liberalised disability and war injury pension rates. The general rules on entitlement are in the articles on family pension and disability pension.

Age related additional pension moves with the OROP rate. Paragraph 9 of the letter dated 20 January 2023 makes the revised rate the basic pension from the effective date, so the additional pension payable at 80 years and above is enhanced on the revised figure from the effective date or the date the pensioner turns 80, whichever is later.

Who the scheme leaves out

The premature retirement exclusion is the most contested feature of OROP. Paragraph 2.6 of the letter dated 10 July 2024 provides that personnel who opt to be discharged on or after 1 July 2014 on their own request under Rule 13(3)I(i)(b), 13(3)II(i)(b) or 13(3)III(iv), or Rule 16B, of the Army Rules 1954, or the equivalent Navy or Air Force rules, are not entitled to the benefits of OROP. Paragraph 4 of the 7 November 2015 letter created that bar and made it prospective.

Four further categories sit outside. Paragraph 3.1 of the letter dated 20 January 2023 excludes UK, HKSRA and KCIO pensioners, Pakistan and Burma Army pensioners, Reservist pensioners, and pensioners in receipt of ex-gratia payments.

The exclusion is administratively awkward because the Pension Payment Order does not record whether a discharge was on the individual’s own request. Paragraph 4 of the letter dated 20 January 2023 says so plainly, and paragraph 4.1 therefore routes everyone who retired on or after 1 July 2014 and before 1 July 2019 through a corrigendum PPO rather than a table based revision, handled through the SPARSH application for migrated pensioners and by the Pension Sanctioning Authorities for the rest. A pensioner who took premature retirement or voluntary retirement should expect their case to be settled individually rather than by the tables.

The five yearly revision cycle

Paragraph 3(v) of the 7 November 2015 letter fixed the cycle at five years, and each round moves the base year forward by five as well. The base year is always a calendar year, while the effective date is always 1 July.

The gap between the effective date and the order is the striking feature of the middle row. The revision due on 1 July 2019 was approved by the Union Cabinet only on 23 December 2022, sanctioned by the letter of 4 January 2023 and tabulated on 20 January 2023, a delay of three and a half years that the Supreme Court attributed to the pendency of the litigation before it.

The third round moved faster. The Union Cabinet approved it on 3 July 2024, the sanctioning letter issued on 10 July 2024, and the tables followed on 4 September 2024, both dates recorded in the Ministry of Defence Annual Report 2025-26. A corrigendum issued in October 2025 under the same file number reissued five of the 121 tables, numbers 14, 26, 48, 59 and 94, after typographical and formatting errors left some rates blank or printed rates against the wrong qualifying service.

The Judicial Committee on anomalies

Paragraph 5 of the 7 November 2015 letter promised a Judicial Committee to look into anomalies arising out of implementation, reporting in six months. The Ministry of Defence constituted it by order dated 14 December 2015.

The Committee issued a public notice on 13 April 2016 inviting representations from the Defence forces, pensioners, family pensioners and defence pensioners associations on anomalies in implementation, with a closing date of 29 April 2016 that was later extended to 15 May 2016. The Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare then referred four specific questions to it by letter dated 20 July 2016: whether OROP should extend to Reservists, whether restricting the MACP benefit under OROP to pensioners who had actually earned it needed modification, whether pension tables should be prepared for more than 33 years of qualifying service, and whether the method of fixation needed changing where there were no actual retirees in a given rank and qualifying service.

The MACP question is the substantial one, and the figures the Union placed before the Supreme Court explain why. Among 2013 retirees, 96.4% of Sepoys, 72.3% of Naiks, 48.9% of Havildars and 90.9% of Artificers III to I in the Navy had drawn a benefit under the Modified Assured Career Progression scheme, against 1.6% of Naib Subedars, 2.2% of Subedars and 0.2% of Subedar Majors. The base year average for the lower ranks is therefore pulled up by career progression upgradations that many older pensioners never had.

Indian Ex-Servicemen Movement v. Union of India

The Supreme Court upheld the design of OROP on 16 March 2022. In Writ Petition (Civil) No. 419 of 2016, a bench of Dr D. Y. Chandrachud, Surya Kant and Vikram Nath JJ rejected the argument that the Constitution requires automatic and continuous equalisation of defence pensions.

The Court held that the government had a range of policy choices open to it, including taking the minimum, the maximum or the average, that it had chosen the average, and that persons below the average were brought up to it while those above it were protected. Such a decision, the judgment records, lies within the ambit of policy choices. It also held that no legal or constitutional mandate of OROP can be read into the earlier decisions in D. S. Nakara and SPS Vains, and that pensions varying between officers of the same rank retiring before and after 1 July 2014, whether because of MACP or because of a different base salary, cannot be held arbitrary.

The petitioners did win one direction. Recording that the re-fixation required by paragraph 3(v) had not been carried out, the Court ordered at paragraph 51 that a re-fixation exercise be carried out from 1 July 2019 and that arrears payable to all eligible pensioners be computed and paid within three months. That direction is what produced the Cabinet approval of 23 December 2022 and the orders of January 2023.

Arrears and the instalment schedule

Arrears under an OROP revision run from the effective date to the date of implementation, and the payment schedule has been rewritten once under court supervision. Paragraph 6 of the letter dated 20 January 2023 provided for four half yearly instalments, with family pensioners including those on special or liberalised family pension, and all gallantry award winners, paid in one instalment.

The Supreme Court revisited that schedule on 20 March 2023 in MA No. 219 of 2023 in the same writ petition, and MoD letter No. 1(1)/2019/D(Pen/Pol)/Vol-II dated 28 April 2023 amended paragraph 6 accordingly. Family pensioners and gallantry award winners were to be paid in one instalment on or before 30 April 2023. Pensioners aged 70 years or above as on 1 January 2023 were to be paid on or before 30 June 2023. The remaining pensioners were to be paid in equal instalments on or before 31 August 2023, 30 November 2023 and 28 February 2024.

The third round is on a shorter promise. Paragraph 2.5 of the letter dated 10 July 2024 states that arrears will be paid within one financial year. Paragraph 12 of the letter dated 20 January 2023 also sets the outer limit in the other direction, barring any arrears for the period before the effective date of the round.

Where a pensioner entitled to arrears has died, paragraph 10 of the letter dated 20 January 2023 governs the Life Time Arrears. A claimant already in receipt of family pension, or in whose favour family pension stands notified, is paid by the Pension Disbursing Agency on its own motion, as is a claimant who has already received Life Time Arrears in the past for the same deceased pensioner. Any other claimant is paid as a legal heir under the extant orders.

Elements paid on top of the OROP pension

The OROP table rate is basic pension, and three elements are paid in addition to it. Paragraph 11 of the letter dated 20 January 2023 lists them: the monetary allowance attached to gallantry awards such as the Param Vir Chakra and the Ashok Chakra, Constant Attendance Allowance where admissible, and dearness relief as sanctioned by the government from time to time.

Dearness relief is the element that matters month to month. Because the table rate is basic pension, every dearness relief instalment announced for central government pensioners is applied to the revised OROP figure, so a revision raises both the base and every future relief payment calculated on it. The rate tracks the dearness allowance percentage sanctioned for serving employees.

Age related additional pension is not a separate element but an enhancement of the basic pension itself, and paragraph 9 of the same letter enhances it on the revised figure from the effective date.

Commutation and the OROP increase

A pensioner cannot commute the increase an OROP revision brings. Paragraph 13 of the letter dated 20 January 2023 provides that no commutation of pension shall be admissible on the revised or additional amount of pension accruing as a result of the revision.

The deduction already running is unaffected in the other direction. The same paragraph states that the existing amount of pension that has been commuted will continue to be deducted from the revised pension, so a pensioner who commuted a portion before the revision carries that deduction into the new figure and recovers it on the normal schedule set out under commutation of pension and restoration of commuted pension.

The practical effect is that OROP raises the residual pension in the hand rather than creating a fresh commutable lump sum. A pensioner 12 years into a commutation is drawing a higher revised basic pension, less the same rupee deduction as before, until restoration falls due 15 years from the date of commutation.

How a pension disbursing agency applies the tables

The revision is meant to reach the pensioner without an application. Paragraph 4.2 of the letter dated 20 January 2023 authorises all Pension Disbursing Agencies to revise retiring, service, special, disability, invalid, liberalised disability and war injury pension, including the disability and war injury elements, and ordinary, special and liberalised family pension, from the tables appended to the order, without calling for any application from the pensioner and without further authorisation from the Pension Sanctioning Authority.

The Pension Payment Order carries the particulars the agency needs. Paragraph 7 of the same letter records that the initial PPO or its corrigendum PPO indicates the rank, group and qualifying service for which the individual was pensioned, and that the agencies already hold this information because they revised the same pensions under the 7th Central Pay Commission orders. Where a particular is missing, the case goes to the Pension Sanctioning Authority on the Annexure-A proforma, and paragraph 7 requires the authority to supply the information within 15 days.

Disputes on interpretation have a named route. Paragraph 8 directs Pension Disbursing Agencies with a doubt to take the matter up with the nodal officers of the respective Pension Sanctioning Authorities, whose details are notified by the Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (Pensions), Prayagraj, in its implementation instructions.

Defence parity against civil modified parity

OROP gives defence pensioners a form of parity that central civil pensioners do not have. A civil pension is revised when a pay commission is implemented, using the notional pay method and the concordance tables, which delivers modified parity: the revised pension is not less than 50% of the minimum pay of the level corresponding to the post last held. It is parity against a pay structure, not against a specific recent retiree.

An OROP revision compares a pensioner against people, not against a scale. The base year cohort is a set of actual retirees whose actual pensions are read off, and the older pensioner is brought to the average of what they drew. That is why a defence pensioner is revised on two independent cycles, the pay commission cycle and the OROP cycle, while a central civil pensioner is revised on one. The mechanics of the civil route are set out under revision of pension, notional pay fixation and the concordance table.

The two cycles interact rather than compete, because the OROP base year cohort itself retired under whichever pay commission was current. Retirees of calendar year 2023 were on the 7th CPC pay matrix, so the 2023 base carries the 7th CPC pay structure into the pensions of pre 2014 retirees without any separate notional fixation.

OROP is a pension scheme, not a pay element

OROP has no effect on the pay of a serving soldier. It operates on pensions already sanctioned and on family pensions payable to dependants, and the instruments that set serving pay are separate.

Military Service Pay is a flat element added to the pay of serving Defence Forces personnel and counts towards the emoluments on which pension is first calculated. The defence pay matrix sets the pay itself, on the structure introduced by the 7th Central Pay Commission. Neither is revised by an OROP order, and an OROP order does not change a single cell of the matrix.

The confusion is common enough to be worth stating flatly. A serving Havildar’s pay comes from the defence pay matrix and Military Service Pay. A retired Havildar’s pension comes from the OROP table for that rank, group and qualifying service, subject to whichever pay commission revision is more favourable.

Cost and coverage

The Ministry of Defence Annual Report 2025-26 puts the reach of the current round at about 20.43 lakh pensioners under OROP-III, and records that OROP has led to an additional disbursement of approximately Rs. 1.24 lakh crore in pensions over the past decade.

The figures at implementation are on the record in the Supreme Court judgment. At paragraph 35 of the judgment of 16 March 2022, the Court noted the Union Government’s affidavit that the annual financial implication when OROP was implemented was Rs. 7,123.38 crore, and that the actual arrears for the period 1 July 2014 to 31 December 2015 came to Rs. 10,392.35 crore.

Those numbers set the scale of what a five yearly cycle commits the exchequer to. Each round adds a recurring liability that runs for the lifetime of a very large pensioner population, plus an arrears bill for the interval between the effective date and the order, and the interval on the second round ran to three and a half years.

The revision due on 1 July 2029 and the 8th Central Pay Commission

The next OROP revision falls due on 1 July 2029, on the calendar year 2028 base, following paragraph 3(v) of the 7 November 2015 letter and the pattern of the three rounds run so far. No order has been issued for it, and the Ministry has not published a base year cohort or a table for that round.

The 8th Central Pay Commission, constituted in November 2025, will separately recommend a revision of pay and pension across the services. Its recommendations are not published, so how a fresh pay structure will interact with the 2029 OROP round is not settled, and no figure for either can be stated as fact. What is settled is that the two revisions are sanctioned by different orders on different cycles, and that a defence pensioner receives whichever is more favourable rather than both.

As on 9 September 2026 the operative position is the third round: pensions stand re-fixed with effect from 1 July 2024 on the calendar year 2023 base, on the 121 tables issued on 4 September 2024 as corrected in October 2025.

Related Articles

• Central government pension
• Revision of pension
• Pension calculation
• Concordance table
• Notional pay fixation
• Family pension
• Dual family pension
• Disability pension
• Commutation of pension
• Restoration of commuted pension
• Dearness relief
• Dearness allowance
• Qualifying service
• Premature retirement
• Voluntary retirement
• Retirement age for central government employees
• Military Service Pay
• Defence pay matrix
• Modified Assured Career Progression
• Pay matrix
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• 8th Central Pay Commission
• Pay fixation on re-employment
• Gratuity for central government employees
• Old Pension Scheme
• National Pension System
• Unified Pension Scheme
• NPS compared with OPS and UPS
• Central armed police forces
• Central government employees in India
• Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare
• Department of Expenditure
• Income tax for government employees
• PPO and the annual life certificate
• Life certificate
• Armed Forces Tribunal
• Commutation of pension calculator
• Family pension calculator
• Rule 44 pension calculator
• 7th CPC salary calculator

External references

• Ministry of Defence
• Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare
• Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare, pension circulars
• MoD letter dated 7 November 2015 implementing OROP
• MoD letter dated 28 April 2023 on OROP arrears
• MoD letter dated 10 July 2024 revising OROP from 1 July 2024
• Ministry of Defence Annual Report 2025-26
• Controller General of Defence Accounts

References

1. Ministry of Defence, Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare, letter No. 12(1)/2014/D(Pen/Pol)-Part-II dated 7 November 2015, implementing One Rank One Pension with effect from 1 July 2014, paragraphs 2 to 7.
2. Ministry of Defence, Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare, letter No. 12(1)/2014/D(Pen/Pol)-Part-II dated 3 February 2016, issuing the pension tables for the first round, and the corrigendum of 6 June 2017.
3. Notification issued by the Judicial Committee on OROP dated 2 August 2016, recording the constituting order of 14 December 2015, the public notice of 13 April 2016 and the questions referred by the Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare on 20 July 2016.
4. Indian Ex-Servicemen Movement v. Union of India, Writ Petition (Civil) No. 419 of 2016, Supreme Court of India, judgment dated 16 March 2022, paragraphs 35, 49 and 51.
5. Ministry of Defence, Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare, letter No. 1(1)/2019/D(Pen/Pol) dated 4 January 2023, sanctioning the revision with effect from 1 July 2019.
6. Ministry of Defence, Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare, letter No. 1(1)/2019/D(Pen/Pol)/Vol-II dated 20 January 2023, appending 121 pension tables, paragraphs 3 to 13.
7. Supreme Court of India, order dated 20 March 2023 in MA No. 219 of 2023 in Writ Petition (Civil) No. 419 of 2016, on the payment of OROP arrears.
8. Ministry of Defence, Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare, letter No. 1(1)/2019/D(Pen/Pol)/Vol-II dated 28 April 2023, amending paragraph 6 of the letter dated 20 January 2023.
9. Ministry of Defence, Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare, letter No. 1(2)/2023/D(Pen/Pol) dated 10 July 2024, revising pension under OROP with effect from 1 July 2024, paragraphs 2.1 to 2.6.
10. Ministry of Defence, Annual Report 2025-26, Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare chapter, section on pension reforms.