The State Bank of India on Monday announced the release of 'One Rank One Pension' (OROP) arrears to 775,000 defence pensioners as per the government guidelines.SBI chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya said the bank will release the first instalment of 25 percent (one-fourth) of the total arrears up to February 2016 to these pensioners.It will also release on Monday (March 14) the full amount of arrears to 'family pensioners' and 'gallantry award' pensioners. All pensioners will get the revised basic salary from March 2016 onwards, she said in a statement here.
"The SBI serves approximately 50 percent of the total defence pensioners across the country, which is the largest share. The first tranche of arrear payment by the SBI will be around Rs.1,465 crore," Bhattacharya said.She said the SBI has introduced facilities in all branches and Centralise Pension Processing Centres to provide arrear details to the defence pensioners.The bank has taken utmost care in computing and releasing the arrears to the maximum number of eligible defence pensioners, the SBI chief said, adding that there could be cases where the bank was unable to release the OROP arrears due to information gaps in the available data.Such persons may contact their pension disbursing branch and provide the requisite information for early payment of their arrears, she said.