In an early New Year’s gift for defence pensioners and the country’s poor, the Narendra Modi government has taken two big decisions on Friday. The One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme has been revised and subsidised food grains will now be given free of cost to the poor for the next one year.
The first decision will cost the government almost Rs 31,000 crore and the second about Rs 2 lakh crore.
Thought for food
The one-year extension of the free food grains scheme is a major pro-poor government move and could be the ruling BJP’s big trump card ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
More than 80 crore people will now get free food grains under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) and will not have to pay a single rupee for it. The central government will spend around Rs 2 lakh crore per year on this scheme. This amounts to a merger of the PM Anna Yojana with NFSA and the government will grant free food grains under the National Food Security Act till December 2023 with the Centre bearing the entire cost of this.
So far, subsidised food grains were given to the poor under the NFSA and additionally food grains were given to the poor for free for the past two and a half years under the PM Anna Yojana during the Covid pandemic. The government said the additional amount of food grains given under the PM Anna Yojana was no longer required and they would get food grains for free for the next year under the NFSA as part of a pro-poor move by the Prime Minister.
The PM Anna Yojana was coming to an end on December 31, 2022.
Fixing pension tension
Additionally, the government has also approved the revision of pension for armed forces’ pensioners and family pensioners under the One Rank One Pension scheme with effect from July 1, 2019, and over 25.13 lakh retired personnel will benefit from it with the government footing the cost of an additional annual expenditure of Rs 8,450 crore. Further, Rs 23,638 crore will be paid as arrears from July 2019 to June 2022 in four half-yearly instalments. However, all the family pensioners, including those in receipt of special/liberalised family pension and gallantry award winners will be paid arrears in one instalment, the government said.
Pension of past pensioners would be re-fixed on the basis of the average of minimum and maximum pension of defence forces’ retirees of 2018 in the same rank with the same length of service, the government said. The armed forces personnel retired up to June 30, 2019, will be covered under this revision. More than 25.13 lakh (including over 4.52 lakh new beneficiaries) armed forces’ pensioners and family pensioners will be benefitted. The pension for those drawing above the average shall be protected. The benefit would also be extended to family pensioners, including war widows and disabled pensioners.
The Modi government implemented OROP in 2015 with effect from July 1, 2014, and had promised that the pension would be re-fixed every five years. So far, almost Rs 57,000 crore has been spent on the scheme.
