(Dr Daljit S Cheema says AAP govt exposed in parliament, never asked for return of corpus to implement OPS)
Chandigarh – The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) asked chief minister Bhagwant Mann to explain why he had cheated government employees by issuing a notification to implement the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) in the State when the State had not even asked the central government to return the accumulated corpus of subscribers under the National Pension System back to it.
In a statement here, former minister Dr Daljit Singh Cheema said the AAP government was exposed in parliament today when it came to light that it had not made a request to the centre and the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority to return the corpus of its subscribers back to the State so that it could use the same to fund the Old Pension Scheme. “Only three States – Rajasthan, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand have made such a request, making it clear that the AAP government indulged in a sham exercise by issuing a notification to implement the Old Pension Scheme on the eve of elections to Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat, to befool government employees. This proves beyond doubt that the AAP government and chief minister Bhagwant Mann did not have any intention of implementing the scheme and was only playing politics on this issue. This is condemnable and amounts to betraying lakhs of pensioners as well as government employees”.
Dr Cheema also asked the AAP government to come out with a plan to implement the Old Pension Scheme as promised and not to get into a blame game with the central government on this issue. “You (AAP) made this promise to Punjabis. You should have made the necessary calculations to generate the funds needed to implement this scheme. You cannot pass on the buck to the centre””, Dr Cheema asserted.
