The written reply of the government came after a question by Congress MLAs Ravindra Singh Tomar, Suresh Raje, and BJP MLA Dinesh Rai Munmun.
"There is no proposal for implementing OPS," Minister for Finance Jagdish Devda said in reply to the queries.
The minister clarified that the employees appointed after 1 January 2005 are registered under the New Pension Scheme (NPS) and in Madhya Pradesh there are 4,83,332 such employees.
Former Chief Minister and Congress President Kamal Nath promised earlier this week that they will restore the OPS if voted back to power in the assembly elections slated for November 2023. “The pension of government employees, which was stopped by the Shivraj (Singh Chouhan) government, will be restored as soon as the Congress government is formed in Madhya Pradesh," Nath tweeted.
The state is witnessing protests from employees who joined under the banner of the MP chapter of the National Movement of Old Pension Scheme and are demanding restoration of the OPS claiming that the benefits under the NPS are not adequate.
The Union Government has already cleared its stand on the OPS with Union Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad stating on 12 December that there is no proposal under the consideration of government regarding the restoration of OPS.
Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand have asked the Union Government and Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) to return the accumulated corpus of subscribers under NPS to the respective states.
On 18 November, the government of Punjab also announced its decision to restore the scheme but the Union government has not received any requests from Punjab yet.
"The state governments of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand, have sent proposals to the central government/PFRDA to return the accumulated corpus of subscribers under NPS to respective state governments. No such proposal has been received from the state government of Punjab," the minister said in a written reply to Lok Sabha.
The old Pension Scheme is slowly becoming a sensitive election issue in many states with the Congress party promising in every election to restore the scheme. Many political pundits attribute the recent victory of the Congress party in Himachal Pradesh to the same promise of the restoration of OPS.
With inputs from PTI
