The plea came up
before a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath which ordered
that the matter be listed before another bench on Thursday.
A PIL for a public hearing on ex- servicemen’s
grievances by the one-member judicial commission on OROP was on Wednesday moved
before the Delhi High Court which is likely to hear the matter on Thursday.
The plea, which has also sought directions to the
government to extend the duration of the commission headed by Justice (retired)
L Narasimha Reddy, came up before a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice
Jayant Nath which ordered that the matter be listed before another bench on
Thursday.
The petition, filed by ex-serviceman S P Singh
through advocates Vijender Mahndiyan and Satya Rajan Swain, has sought
directions to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the commission “to give an
effective public hearing to those affected or aggrieved by implementation of
One Rank One Pension (OROP)”.
According to the petition, as per an MoD letter
dated April 13, 2016, “Defence Forces pensioners/family pensioners, Defence
Pensioners’ Associations can submit their representation, suggestions/views on
the revised pension as notified, to the MoD, through post or by email within 15
days i.e. by April 29, 2016”.
The petitioner has contended that this information
was not published in the newspapers and, therefore, people were not informed
and added that even the time limit given to forward the representations was
“very short”.
He has also contended that asking those aggrieved
to forward their grievances to MoD was “unfair and violative of principles of
natural justice” as representations would be against the government.
“…the basic lacuna in the whole mechanism is that
the representations will go to the One-Member Judicial Commission through the
Ministry of Defence; therefore, it is not fair as the representations will be
against the Ministry only. Secondly, the affected persons will be hesitant to
send their grievances through the ministry,” the petition has said.
It had also said that since mechanism adopted for
consultation was written representations alone and no oral representation was
allowed, it is “violative of the basic concept of effective hearing”.
Another grievance raised in the plea was that the
government has not shared the correspondence address or contact details of the
commission despite making several requests.
The petitioner has claimed that “due to
non-availability of correspondence address, the aggrieved persons have not been
able to share their concerns with the judicial commission, which is expected to
finalise its report by mid June 2016”.
- See more at:
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/pil-in-delhi-hc-for-public-hearing-before-orop-commission-2828925/#sthash.NHVaKAQt.dpuf
There are many anomalies yet to be sorted out even now with regards to the 6CPC. And then we got OROP anomalies to be sorted out by Reddy committee and then corrected by the SC's present litigation. The PMO failed n this respect totally. The 7CPC brought in a degrading pay/perk/pensions for the soldiers and the ESM which will linger on forever. All this is just because the powers entrusted with implementation orders are not working with a open mind and the committees do not apply their logic in favoring the affected. All the decision making is non transparent. So, be sure we the soldiers and the ESM will be running around the courts for justice just because of the injustice meted out by the irresponsible and egoistic bureaucracy.
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