NEW DELHI: Members of the Government Employees National Confederation (GENC) on Wednesday staged a protest, at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, demanding scrapping of the National Pension System (NPS) and restoration of the Old Pension Scheme (OPS).
The protest by GENC — affiliated to the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), a trade union backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — has come at a time when the clamour for return to the OPS has been increasing.
The union is also demanding the provision of dearness relief for price neutralisation, and a commitment to revise pensions in line with the recommendations of subsequent central pay commissions.
According to a statement by GENC, the daylong protest saw participation from scores of government employees, including members of state and central establishments like defence, railways, postal services, local bodies, and the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation. These employees, according to a union leader, later called on Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and handed over a memorandum on the issue.
Earlier this year, the finance ministry had set up a committee under the finance secretary to review the NPS and come up with a solution to the issue of pensions. This was after a few states ruled by parties in the Opposition at the Centre — notably Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Punjab — announced a return to the OPS. The committee has yet to submit its findings.
“Before January 2004 (when the NPS was introduced), the OPS provided a non-contributory guarantee ensuring that 50 per cent of the last salary became the pension upon retirement. Additionally, the scheme was intricately linked to the price index, resulting in the receipt of dearness allowance twice a year, in January and July. Government employees, who feel deprived of their rightful pension under the guise of social security, are now urgently appealing to the government to abolish NPS and reinstate OPS,” the GENC statement said.
Restoring the OPS has been a key ‘guarantee’ of the Congress in the Assembly elections since the Himachal Pradesh polls in November 2022. The Congress’ manifestos for the ongoing Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh state elections have promised to restore the OPS. And so have the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi and Opposition Congress in Telangana.
In Maharashtra, a strike by government employees during the Budget session of the legislature in March ended after the state government appointed a committee to look into the issue. However, with the committee yet to submit its report, government employees have threatened to relaunch their agitation in December. The Andhra Pradesh Assembly in September passed the Guaranteed Pension System Bill, a hybrid of NPS and OPS, with its finance minister stating the state would be unable to pay salaries in 10 years if it were to implement OPS.
“The BMS and its affiliated federations have been opposing the NPS since the beginning. There was no improvement in the NPS during the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) rule, but the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) government did make some reforms — like providing gratuity in 2016 and the provision of family pension. Even after these reforms, the dissatisfaction of employees did not go away because the NPS is not a guaranteed pension scheme,” the GENC memorandum said.
Notably, the Congress and other Opposition parties have received more postal ballots than the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in some of the recent Assembly polls. Government servants on polling duty, defence personnel, personnel with disabilities, and those above 80 years of age are entitled to postal ballots.
According to the Election Commission data, the Congress received 43.8 per cent of the votes polled in the Himachal Pradesh elections last year, compared with the BJP’s 43.1 per cent. But so far as postal ballots are concerned, the Congress bagged 49.15 per cent, against the BJP’s 41.1 per cent; the rest went to the Aam Aadmi Party. In Gujarat, the BJP’s vote share was 52.6 per cent, but it received only 39.8 per cent of the postal ballots. The Congress and AAP together received nearly 55 per cent of these, even as their total vote shares were only 27.3 per cent and 12.8 per cent, respectively.
Source: Business Standard
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