Old Pension Scheme: After returning from Ukraine tour, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold an important meeting with the leaders of central employees at his Delhi residence on Friday. The Personnel Ministry had issued a notice in this regard on August 21. This meeting is being held at a time when assembly elections are to be held in two states Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir. In this regard also this meeting is considered very important.

This is the first meeting in the last 10 years, in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the main members of the National Council of Central Employees i.e. Joint Consultative Machinery (JCM) will participate. In this meeting with the Prime Minister, important discussions can be held regarding Old Pension (OPS) Scheme, New Pension Scheme (NPS) and 8th Pay Commission.

While presenting the budget, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also talked about improving the New Pension Scheme. At the same time, in response to a question asked in the House, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary had said that the government is not discussing any discussion on the restoration of Old Pension Scheme.

Earlier Old Pension Scheme

  1. Under this scheme, half the amount of the employee’s salary is given as pension at the time of retirement.
  2. In the Old Pension Scheme, no money is deducted from the employee’s salary for pension.
  3. In OPS, payment is made from the government treasury.
  4. In this scheme, gratuity money up to Rs 20 lakh is available.
  5. On the death of the retired employee, his family gets the pension amount.
  6. There is a provision of General Provident Fund (GPF) in the old scheme.
  7. There is a provision of dearness allowance (DA) after 6 months.

New Pension Scheme (NPS)

  1. 10 percent of the employee’s basic salary + DA is deducted.
  2. NPS is based on the stock market, so it is not safe.
  3. There is no provision of dearness allowance after 6 months.
  4. The New Pension Scheme does not guarantee a fixed pension after retirement.
  5. The New Pension Scheme is based on the stock market, so there is a provision of tax in it.
  6. To get pension on retirement in this scheme, it is necessary to invest up to 40 percent of the New Pension Scheme fund.

A committee was formed to improve NPS

After the implementation of the New Pension Scheme, the employees had protested a lot, after which in March 2024, the government constituted a committee to improve NPS under the chairmanship of the then Finance Secretary TV Somanathan (recently appointed Cabinet Secretary). For improvement in the committee, a study has also been done on the pension schemes of countries around the world as well as the reforms done by the Andhra Pradesh government.

After this, there is a discussion that the government may be able to guarantee 40 to 45 percent pension. After this, recently it was reported that the government can guarantee 50 percent pension of the last salary to the central employees.

If it is understood in simple words, if the last salary of an employee before retirement was Rs 50 thousand, then the government is planning to give him a pension of Rs 25 thousand every month.

AIDEF will not boycott the meeting

Earlier, the railways had refused to attend the meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Now, the largest organization of central employees, All India Defense Employee Federation (AIDEF) has boycotted the Prime Minister’s meeting. Regarding this, AIDEF General Secretary C Srikumar said that the organization will not attend the meeting with PM Modi.

He said that in this meeting, there will be discussion about reforms in NPS and not OPS restoration. Many organizations have already said that employees want OPS only. Let us tell you that AIDEF had also boycotted the Finance Ministry’s meeting on July 15.

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