State Bank of India on Monday released arrears worth Rs 1,465 crore to 7.75 lakh defence pensioners under One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme.
“As per government guidelines, first instalment (1/4th of the total arrear amount up to February, 2016) to service pensioners and full amount of arrears to ‘family pensioners’ and ‘gallantry award’ pensioners will be paid on 14th March, 2016,” SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said in a statement.
“All pensioners will get revised basic (pension) from March 2016 onwards,” Ms. Bhattacharya said.
SBI noted that while the bank has taken utmost care in the computation and release of arrears to maximum number of eligible defence pensioners, there could be cases where it has not been able to release >OROP arrears due to information gaps in the data available with the bank.
“All such persons may approach their pension-disbursing branch and provide the missing information for an early release of the arrears,” the statement added.
SBI has introduced facilities in all branches and centralised pension processing centres to provide arrear details to the pensioners.
As per government directions, payment of arrears would be made by the pension-disbursing authorities in 4 installments, except for family pensioners and pensioners in receipt of gallantry awards, who will be paid arrears in one installment.
