Opposition parties staged a noisy walk-out from the Asembly on Monday demanding implementation of the old pension scheme for state government employees which was replaced with a new one in 2005. Members of the opposition— Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Congress— were on their feet as the government said that a new pension scheme was enforced when Samajwadi Party was ruling the state and now they wanted to rescind the order of their leader Mulayam Singh Yadav.
“The new pension policy is better than the old one and there is no proposal to change replace the policy with the previous one,” saod Parliamentary Affairs minister Suresh Khanna.
The question was raised by Ajay Kumar lallu (Congress) during the Question Hour and the Parliamentary Affairs minister wondered as to why these parties were raising the issue when they themselves had enforced it. “The new pension is good as 10 per cent of the salary and DA are added in their pension every month. Besides, the government also gives 10 per cent. There is no change in other benefits that were in the old pension,” Khanna said, justifying the government stand of not changing the old policy.
The minister further said that the Government Order (GO) of the new pension scheme was issued on March, 2005 when Mulayam Singh Yadav was Chief Minister of the state.
“After that Mayawati’s government ruled UP and was followed by Akhilesh Yadav’s regime from 2012 to 2015. It is surprising that the SP and the BSP did not raise the issue during their regimes. If the new pension policy is that bad why did the BSP and SP governments not change it,” Khanna asked.
leader of Opposition Ram Govind Chaudhary said that the old pension was better than the new one and held the previous Atal Bihari Vajpayee government responsible for the new pension scheme. “The state was bound to enforce the new pension scheme in 2005 as per Centre’s directive,” he said, but could not reply when the Treasury bench clarified that West Bengal and Tripura refused to obey the Centre and did not implement the new pension scheme in 2005. However, the Opposition refused to relent and continued their demand to reinstate the old pension scheme for employees and later walked out of the House.