A day after the new Congress government in Himachal Pradesh cleared the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) for the state employees, with Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu describing it as a fulfilment of the party’s key election promise, the principal Opposition BJP slammed the government Saturday, terming the move as “political deceit”. The Sukhu government is likely to spend over Rs 800 crore in the first year of implementation of the OPS, which will involve more than 1.36 lakh NPS employees covered by the New Pension Scheme (NPS) currently. "The Congress government made announcement regarding OPS and said it will benefit more than 1.36 lakh employees. But shortly after that, they turned towards the Centre asking for more than Rs 8,000 crore. That money has been invested in nation-building. In reality, the Congress government has no plan. There are already doubts over its functioning. They have gained power by lying and will keep the public in the dark," alleged Himachal BJP spokesperson Karan Nanda. The state BJP also claimed that a similar announcement about reverting to the OPS made by the Congress government in Chhattisgarh could not be implemented. The Sukhu Cabinet’s move to revert to the OPS came days after the state government increased the value added tax (VAT) on diesel from six per cent to 9.96 per cent per litre, taking the price from Rs 83 to Rs 86 per litre, which has been attacked by the BJP for being “a part of the bid to fund the OPS rollout”. CM Sukhu has however maintained that his government will mobilise funds required for the OPS shift through “financial discipline” by curtailing expenses. Under the OPS that was discontinued by the Central government in 2004, government employees got 50 per cent of their last earned pay (basic salary plus dearness allowance) as pension on retirement. Under the NPS, funds are contributed by both employees and the government towards pension. The proposal to revert to the OPS has been questioned by several experts who have warned that it will create open-ended liabilities for future governments. Besides, the Centre and pension regulator PFRDA have maintained it would not be possible to return the money deposited so far in pension funds under the NPS back to state governments. In a sign that the state may soon be on a collision course with the BJP-ruled central government on this issue, Sukhu said on Friday that the Centre has over Rs 8,000 crore from the share of NPS employees from the state. Hitting back at the BJP, Naresh Chauhan, principal media advisor to CM Sukhu, said, “Congress party has been committed to the cause of public and fulfilling OPS promise is a prime example of the same. The BJP is quick to criticise but they forget that the state has been left in thousands of crores of debt because of their mishandling. The Congress government has the vision to streamline finances and give the employees the due share that they have been demanding.” AICC spokesperson and Theog MLA, Kuldeep Singh Rathore, ex-Himachal Congress chief, said : “The OPS will be implemented as a social security measure. We have been of the view that people need to have a source of income after retirement. It has been done in other Congress states and we are committed to it. The party’s vision is to ensure that all sections of society are empowered.” The restoration of the OPS was one of the major election pledges that the Congress made ahead of the December 2022 Himachal Assembly polls, which saw the party ousting the incumbent BJP from power. The party made the OPS its key plank in view of its demand from sections of government employees and their families, which account for a sizeable percentage of the state’s electors. In their poll campaign, Congress leaders, including Sukhu, AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi and Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel, kept projecting the party's commitment to the OPS, citing examples of its implementation in the Congress-ruled states of Rajasthan and Chattisgarh. In Rajasthan, the employees have begun to withdraw from the national corpus, they said. During its election campaign, the BJP struggled to counter the Congress’s OPS plank. The saffron party questioned the Congress’s roadmap for securing finances for the OPS but failed to offer an alternative. Even in its manifesto, the BJP remained silent over the OPS and just proposed a committee to examine the scheme and take a call, which was perceived as the ruling party being non-committal on the issue.
