State public sector employees under chairmanship of Govind Chatranta today met with Mr. Virbhadra Singh seeking pension benefit to them after implementing Himachal Pradesh apex court verdict in the regard.
As many as 500 employees gather at Oak Over, official residence of Mr. Singh to press their demand this morning at Shimla today.
Employees expressed their solidarity towards his leadership and also urged the implementation of the landmark judgments delivered by Supreme Court on October 23, 2013 and delivered at high court of H.P.
The judgement delivered at high court had issued directions to the Regional Provident Commissioner to transfer the entire Corpus to the Secretary (Finance) to the state government within 2 weeks enabling the state government to implement the scheme within 12 weeks.
This direction was issued by the high court after the betrayal of the then government who initially issued a notification dated 29.10.99 made amply clear that all the pensioners benefits to the H.P. corporate sector shall be determined in accordance with the provision laid down in the Central Civil Services (Pension) Rule, 1972 and CCS (Commutation of Pension) Rules, 1981 as amended and adopted by the H.P. government for state government employees.
This scheme was made applicable from 1st April, 1999. The then BJP government has betrayed from its commitment made in the notification and delayed the process of implementation of the scheme till now on one pretext or the other.
Subsequently, the then government had constituted a four members committee for working out the modalities of pension scheme after 4 years of issuance of notification. Such type of modality about viability of the scheme should have been constituted well before the issuance of the notification.
In view of the situation rising out, the corporate sector has a corpus of approximately above Rs. 500 crore (both shares i.e. employer and employees). Out of this, 50 percent (approximately) amount pertains to employer share.
This fund needs budgetary support or cushion money ranging between approximately Rs. 20-25 crore per annum from the government budget for smooth implementation of the scheme other than the existing matching contribution at the rate of 12 percent should continue to be contributed by the respective boards and corporations.
As many as 7000 employees and their dependent families would be benefited after implementation of this scheme.