Chhattisgarh notifies Old Pension Scheme

RAIPUR: The Congress government in Chhattisgarh has issued the notification for implementation of the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) with effect from April 1, 2022. Employees have been given the option of choosing between the New Pension Scheme and OPS.

Government employees, appointed between November 1, 2004, and March 31, 2022, will have to choose NPS or OPS, a notification issued by the state finance department says.

Employees opting for OPS will have to deposit the government contribution to their NPS and the dividend on it into a GPF account for OPS. The Congress governments in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh had announced to re-introduce the old pension scheme while the new Congress government in Himachal Pradesh announced to follow suit immediately after coming to power in the Himalayan state. The JMM-Congress government in Jharkhand has also decided to re-introduce OPS. Chhattisgarh and other states had sent proposals to the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) to return the accumulated corpus of subscribers under NPS to respective state governments but PFRDA informed the state government that there is no such provision.

CM Bhupesh Baghel has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman to return the state’s NPS corpus.