Refuting strongly Congress’s ‘U Turn’ jab, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said the Unified Pension Scheme (UPS) is not a rollback to Old Pension Scheme (OPS). “We are not a government of U-turns... we give flexible, choice-driven governance,” she shot back.
“Definition of ‘U Turn’ need to be understood. This means going back to old position. There is no ‘U Turn’ on pension scheme. We have not altered the basic structure. There has been some tweaking to make it choice driven system. It is different from OPS and NPS (National Pension System). It is clearly a new package,” she said, adding that the scheme is better and will satisfy majority of the central government employees.
She expressed hope that most of the States would adopt UPS “as it has a lot of benefits for employees”. “Unfortunately, these days Congress makes comments without doing comprehensive study. They have just become a sloganeering party.” Defending past decisions like restoration of indexation benefits as part of long-term capital gains tax (LTCG), she said, it was not a rollback but tweaking.
There is a demand to lower down qualifying service period of 25 years to 20 years or even less for 50 per cent assured pension. However, Sitharaman indicated that there might not be any change is that and the formula of pro-rata to be opted for lesser service period up to a minimum of 10 years of service. Taking example of an SC employee, who gets chance up to the age of 37 years, she said that such an officer or employee may not fulfil 25 years condition, so for him, assured pension to be decided on pro-rata basis.
No fund support
UPS can be opted by States, and it would be their call. Meanwhile, sources said that the Centre would not “market” the new pension scheme to States unwilling to adopt it. Also, there will be no fund support to State who are going to opt UPS. It was also clarified that UPS is not applicable to public sector or employees of Central or State-run banks, or the armed forces, who will continue with the older scheme.