Gujarat Elections: AAP, Congress take up restoration of Old Pension Scheme as major poll issue

New Delhi: The restoration of the old pension scheme (OPS) has emerged as a major campaign issue in Gujarat, with both the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party promising to implement it if elected to power in the state's Assembly elections next month. With this promise, the opposition parties hope to gain the support of lakhs of government employees who are angry about the new pension scheme implemented by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will be elected in two stages on December 1 and 5. On the other hand, all three major political parties competing in the Gujarat Assembly elections — the BJP, Congress, and BTP — are facing dissension, and some of the dissenters have announced their intention to run as independent candidates, which could harm the party's chances on a few seats. 

Despite the fact that the parties have dispatched firefighters, they have yet to put out the fire. The BJP has appointed Harsh Sanghvi as Minister of State for Home to put out the fires and bring dissidents like Madhu Srivastav (Waghodia), Satish Patel (Karjan), and Dinesh Patel (Padra) back into the fold. All three did not show up for the BJP-called meeting. According to party sources, Sanghvi has directed local leaders to teach rebellions a lesson, work hard, and ensure that the party's official candidates win by a landslide.

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The Gujarat government had introduced the new contributory pension scheme for employees joining the service on or after April 1, 2005. As per its notification, it will make a matching contribution of 10 per cent of the basic pay plus dearness allowance (DA) contributed by the employees in the NPS fund. Under the Centre's scheme, the government will contribute 14 per cent against an employee's contribution of 10 per cent of his/her salary and DA with effect from April 1, 2019.

After protests by employees in Gujarat, the state government had said the new pension will not be applicable to those employees who had joined duty before April 2005. It also promised to increase its contribution in the fund to 14 per cent from the 10 per cent earlier. The employees have staged massive agitations against the government in Gujarat while demanding restoration of the OPS because they believe the New Pension Scheme is not in the interest of the retiring employees.

With the BJP government not acceding to the demands of the employees, the Congress and the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP have assured to bring back the OPS, in one of their most emphatic poll promises. Both the parties have assured the agitating employees that the new pension scheme (NPS) will be scrapped and the OPS will be resorted. They have given the examples of their governments in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh (where Congress is in power) and Punjab (governed by the AAP) to drive home the point.

"We launched an agitation with 15 demands, of which those related to restoration of the OPS and fixed salary issue were not accepted. The government formed a committee. It said it will increase its contribution to the NPS fund but no notification was issued," Digvijaysinh Jadeja, working president of the Akhil Bharatiya Prathmik Shikshak Sangh, a body of government primary school teachers, told PTI. There are nearly seven lakh government employees who are pressing for the demand for the OPS, including around 70,000 primary schools teachers who joined before 2005 on a fixed salary.

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Jadeja had in February 2019 led an agitation where around two lakh primary school teachers proceeded on 'mass casual leave' and gathered to protest outside the Gujarat Assembly in capital Gandhinagar. The agitation was revived ahead of the upcoming Assembly elections when thousands of state government employees, including school teachers, joined the mass casual leave protest across the state in September this year.

(With agencies inputs)