NEW DELHI: Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday dismissed Congress‘s claim of the govt doing a series of U-turns, including on Unified Pension Scheme and indexation for capital gains on property, and argued that the revised mechanism is a “new package”.
“It is certainly not a rollback. It is different from the old pension scheme and National Pension System.It is not OPS 2.0 or slightly tweaked NPS. It is clearly a new package which has learnt some lessons from NPS,” FM said, while slamming Congress for spreading “false information”.
She said Congress’ attempt to bring back OPS in Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh did not make much headway beyond announcements.
“Unfortunately, unlike earlier when they had internal discussions and substantive discussions, today, they have become a nara-driven party… They had a lot of experience in governance, but they have been in opposition for a long time now. They don’t have many people with governance experience because those with governance experience are unable to work under the young leader,” she said.
Sitharaman argued policy changes in response to feedback should not be seen as a rollback. While maintaining that the withdrawal of the indexation benefit would not have adversely impacted those selling property, she said, based on the feedback from the middle class, govt decided to offer the option to choose whichever regime suited a property seller. Similarly, she said, the draft broadcast bill will come back in a better form. While maintaining that UPS was an attractive proposition for the states too, FM said that the scheme had been tailored in a way that employees will get assured 50% pension and other benefits and even govt will not have to bear a heavy burden.
She said that even those with less than 25 years’ service will get the advantage of 50% assured pension in proportion to the number of years they work for govt.
Asked about demands for a similar package for the private sector, Sitharaman said, she expected companies too to offer similar packages later just as several of them opted to offer NPS for employees after govt introduced the scheme for its employees.
“It is certainly not a rollback. It is different from the old pension scheme and National Pension System.It is not OPS 2.0 or slightly tweaked NPS. It is clearly a new package which has learnt some lessons from NPS,” FM said, while slamming Congress for spreading “false information”.
She said Congress’ attempt to bring back OPS in Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh did not make much headway beyond announcements.
“Unfortunately, unlike earlier when they had internal discussions and substantive discussions, today, they have become a nara-driven party… They had a lot of experience in governance, but they have been in opposition for a long time now. They don’t have many people with governance experience because those with governance experience are unable to work under the young leader,” she said.
Sitharaman argued policy changes in response to feedback should not be seen as a rollback. While maintaining that the withdrawal of the indexation benefit would not have adversely impacted those selling property, she said, based on the feedback from the middle class, govt decided to offer the option to choose whichever regime suited a property seller. Similarly, she said, the draft broadcast bill will come back in a better form. While maintaining that UPS was an attractive proposition for the states too, FM said that the scheme had been tailored in a way that employees will get assured 50% pension and other benefits and even govt will not have to bear a heavy burden.
She said that even those with less than 25 years’ service will get the advantage of 50% assured pension in proportion to the number of years they work for govt.
Asked about demands for a similar package for the private sector, Sitharaman said, she expected companies too to offer similar packages later just as several of them opted to offer NPS for employees after govt introduced the scheme for its employees.