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Indian Ex Servicemen Movement & Ors. vs Union of India & Ors.

Writ Petition (Civil) · 2022 INSC 315Decided 16 Mar 2022
Writ Petition (Civil) No. 419 of 2016
Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud · Surya Kant · Vikram Nath

Background

Ex-servicemen's organisations filed a writ petition under Article 32 challenging how the Union Government implemented the "One Rank One Pension" (OROP) scheme for armed forces pensioners. OROP was meant to give a uniform pension to retirees of the same rank and length of service, regardless of when they retired, with future pension hikes automatically passed on to earlier retirees. The petitioners argued that the Government's letter of 7 November 2015 diluted this promise into "one rank, multiple pensions" by fixing pension on an average of 2013 retirees' pay and revising it only once every five years, instead of automatically, which they said was arbitrary and violated Articles 14 and 21.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that courts should be cautious about second-guessing government policy choices involving complex financial and administrative trade-offs, and can only strike down a policy like OROP if it is shown to be manifestly arbitrary or capricious - not merely because a different, more generous formula was possible. Reviewing its own precedents (including the Constitution Bench in D.S. Nakara), the Court clarified that none of them legally mandated that all retirees of the same rank must get identical pension amounts; only the same computation formula must apply uniformly, and reasonable cut-off dates for pay/pension revisions are permissible. Applying this, the Court found the OROP definition of 7 November 2015 was applied uniformly to all pensioners and not arbitrary, since using the 2013 average pay as the base for older retirees was a legitimate policy choice that protected pensioners rather than disadvantaging them. However, the Court noted that the promised five-yearly revision (due from 1 July 2019) had not been carried out, so it directed the Union Government to carry out that re-fixation and pay all resulting arrears to eligible pensioners within three months.

Lesson Learnt

Courts generally will not strike down a welfare or pension policy just because a more generous alternative existed, so long as the policy is applied uniformly and is not arbitrary; but where the government itself has committed to periodic benefit revisions in its own policy, the courts will enforce that specific promise and its timelines.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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