New Delhi, Aug 24 (IANS): The Supreme Court on Monday said the Centre has taken steps in implementing the One Rank-One Pension (OROP) scheme and that it cannot be said that nothing was done so far.

A bench comprising Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and K.M. Joseph noted that the Centre has already disbursed more than Rs 10,700 crores towards OROP. Justice Chandrachud noted that it is not that they have not acted at all, instead the question is whether equalisation every 5 years will be sufficient or not.

The bench has posted the hearing on a plea, which claims disparity, for further hearing in the last week of September. The observation from the bench came on a plea filed by ex-servicemen claiming what is being implemented is different pensions for the same rank depending on when the person retired.

The petitioners contended that in December 2011, the Koshiyari Committee recommended that OROP implies that Armed Forces Personnel should get uniform pension, if they were retiring with the same rank with the same length of service, irrespective of retirement date and if there were any future enhancement in the rates of pension, then this would be automatically passed on to the past pensioners.

"It is necessary to revise the pension benefits automatically instead of a periodic revision of 5 years because when next pay commission recommendations will be applied past pensioners will still be kept 1.5 years behind because of this periodic revision. It is submitted that therefore the Union of India has by implementation of the new definition of OROP completely destroyed the spirit of OROP which was uniform pension to be paid to the Armed Forces," contended the plea.