Himachal Cabinet to meet on Friday, decision likely on restoration of Old Pension Scheme

Shimla: The restoration of the Old Pension Scheme -- an electoral promise of the Congress -- could take concrete shape at the first meeting of the Himachal Pradesh Cabinet on Friday.

"We are not restoring the Old Pension Scheme for votes but to give social security and safeguard the self respect of the employees who have scripted the history of Himachal's development," Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu said during an address to employees at the Himachal Pradesh Secretariat on Thursday.

"Pension provides self-respect as parents are not dependent on their children. My mother is not dependent on her children as my father's pension takes care of her needs.

"The government will work towards providing a dignified life to its employees after retirement," he said.

The matter has been studied in depth and, despite some reservations by finance officers, the issue has been settled. All employees under the New Pension Scheme will be covered under the Old Pension Scheme, the modalities of which will be worked out in consultation with the employees, Sukhu added.

Employees who joined government service from January 1, 2004, are covered under the New Pension Scheme -- in which the government and employees contribute 10 and 14 per cent, respectively, towards the pension fund. In the old scheme, employees with 20 years of service received 50 per cent of their last drawn salary as pension.

Pradeep Thakur, chief of the New Pension Scheme Employees Federation - Himachal, said, "We have full confidence that the Old Pension Scheme will be restored for employees who entered government service after 2004 and the chief minister will take a decision in this regard in the first Cabinet on Friday." There are about 1.30 lakh employees, including 12,000 pensioners, under the New Pension Scheme.

"We have informed the government that the liability for 2022-23 under the New Pension Scheme is Rs 1,632 crore, of which employees and the government will deposit Rs 680 crore and Rs 952 crore, respectively, while the liability under the Old Pension Scheme will only be Rs 147 crore," Thakur told PTI.

Addressing employees at the Secretariat, Sukhu said employees were the backbone of any regime as it was their hard work that enabled the government's policies and programmes to be implemented in the right perspective.

The government is committed to providing good governance and active and constructive support of the employees is highly solicited for this, he added.

Sukhu also hit out at the previous BJP regime and said that the state was under Rs 75,000-crore debt due to its financial mismanagement and wasteful expenditure. Arrears amounting to Rs 5,000 crore are yet to be paid and employee will have to wait some time for this payment, he said Sukhu also highlighted his government's decision to de-notify over 900 institutions opened by the previous BJP dispensation without budgetary provision as Rs 5,000 crore would be required to make them functional.

Stressing that 90 per cent of Himachal's population resided in rural areas, Sukhu said the government was taking measures to strengthen the rural economy and would purchase cow and buffalo milk at Rs 80 and Rs 100 per litre to increase the income of farmers to motivate them to adopt organic farming on a large scale.