New Delhi: Defence minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday asked the ministry to release the next installment of one rank, one pension (OROP) scheme arrears to former servicemen before Diwali, officials aware of the matter said.

This installment will be the third tranche of OROP arrears to be released to veterans this year.

“Raksha Mantri Shri @rajnathsingh has directed the MoD to release the third installment of OROP Payment for the Defence Pensioners drawing pension through SPARSH System, before Diwali. The Banks and other agencies have also been directed to do the same for all defence pensioners drawing pension through them,” the defence minister’s office wrote on X.

India’s Defence Accounts Department (DAD) must disburse arrears running into thousands of crores to around 2.5 million defence pensioners, in line with aSupreme Court order on making outstanding payments to the ex-servicemen under OROP. Sparsh, or System for Pension Administration (Raksha), involves crediting pensions directly into the accounts of former servicemen without relying on any external intermediary (banks).

In February 2023, the top court reproached the government for delaying payments under the scheme.

The Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had in December 2022 approved the revision of pension of ex-servicemen and family pensioners under the OROP scheme. With that, around 25 lakh defence pensioners became eligible for arrears amounting to ₹23,638 crore.

The scheme, implemented in 2015, envisaged a revision every five years. The revision came after the Supreme Court last September allowed the Centre time until December to implement the revised OROP scheme after being told by the government that re-fixation of pension was a “time consuming” process.

The defence pensioners covered under the revised scheme included 4.52 lakh new beneficiaries.

The pension scheme was revised with effect from July 01, 2019, and the arrears are being paid for the period July 2019 to June 2022. The Modi government implemented OROP, a decades-old demand, for defence pensioners in November 2015 with effect from July 2014.