Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot has said that his government chose to stick to the old pension scheme instead of the new system keeping in mind the financial guarantees that it provides.
The Congress government in the state has recently restored the old pension scheme, making it applicable to all employees who joined the government services on or after January 1, 2004. States like Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab have set up state-level committees to review the NPS in their respective states in view of the protests by the NPS employees. The West Bengal Government has not yet implemented the NPS.
“In the Old Pension System, an employee was guaranteed the right of pension as half of the last basic salary plus dearness relief at the time of retirement and in the case of in-service death, the employee and his family were given economic support in the form of Death Cum Retirement Gratuity (DCRG). The new system carries no such guarantee,” Gehlot said.
He added that while several critics of the scheme have said that the old system carries a heavier financial burden on the government, developmental works in the state never stopped. “These critics fail to take into account the fact that the country has done commendably well even when the old system was in force. Development and public welfare works were never curtailed,” Gehlot said.
A performance audit of the planning, implementation and monitoring of the NPS by the CAG has said that after 15 years of its implementation, rules on service conditions and retirement benefits of employees covered by the systems were waiting to be finalised.
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Published 01 March 2022, 16:13 IST