Not accepting OROP in totality exposes NDA's 'U-turn': Sibal

Congress leader Kapil Sibal on Saturday said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government has done a 'U-turn' by not accepting the One Rank One Pension (OROP) proposal in totality.

"The BJP government has betrayed the ex-servicemen. The OROP decision was made by UPA government. The decision was that all the ex-servicemen will get same pension if they have same rank and same length of service, irrespective of date of retirement. The issue of equalisation was already decided, today this government has done a U-turn on that," Sibal told media here.

"We had said in our manifesto in 2004 that we will give OROP. The sad part is that they want to politicize even this issue...46 percent of the ex-servicemen who take voluntary retirement will not get pension, what kind of treatment is this. Then they say they will appoint a committee to decide on certain aspects of OROP demands, we oppose it," he added.

On Saturday afternoon, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar announced that the government has decided to implement the much awaited OROP scheme, stating that there would be a revision of pension every five years as against the two years demanded by the ex-servicemen.

He also said that the government would also setup a one-member judicial committee to work out details of implementation of the OROP.