THE COMING DAYS WILL TELL US WHETHER THE FILING OF A REVIEW PETITION WAS IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

The ex-servicemen community believes that the timing of filing a review petition in HSC has given the Union of India a shot in the arm to further delay the long-delayed implementation of the OROP refixation. Any layman can find that there is no legitimate basis or scope for filing a review petition before the same court that delivered the judgement. All our learned colleagues' arguments, as briefed by the managers of the legal battle, were flatly rejected by the court.

Many members of the impacted community were concerned from the start about relying on the Koshyari Committee report, which has no legal backing. We are at a loss to understand how those learned senior consuls consented to argue the case solely based on the report of the above committee, which has only advisory power and relied on parliamentary speeches. The overdependence on these points has diverted our attention from convincing the court regarding discrimination and arbitrariness in the original OROP notification based on an executive decision.

The basis of the review petition appears to have stemmed from the appellants' desperation, which will hurt the entire ex-serviceman community. The timing and impact of the review petition will almost certainly be detrimental to the interests of the entire ex-serviceman community. The Appellants, who were once advocates of the OROP campaign in the eyes of the ex-servicemen community, have now become roadblocks to the long awaited OROP refixation.

We are not blaming the appellants for their failure to win the case because winning and losing are both parts of the judicial process that must be accepted wholeheartedly. Having said that, the appellants' actions in filing a review petition after the judgement upholding the executive decision are not acceptable to the ex-servicemen community and are detrimental to their interests.

Last but not least, we are grateful to the appellants who pioneered the OROP campaign and brought the matter to judicial scrutiny where the bench ordered the refixasion as per earlier executive decision that was otherwise unlikely to be updated on the grounds that it had already been revised by the 7th CPC, as instructed by the Hon CGDA.